Stability of Rossby solitons
Antipov S.V., Nezlin M. V. , Rodionov V. K. , Snezhkin E. N. , Trubnikov A. S.
The mechanism for the decay of individual vortices, excited in a rotating shallow fluid with constant depth, is investigated experimentally under conditions of approximate equilibrium between the Coriolis force and the hydrostatic pressure gradient, when the characteristic rotational frequency of the vortex is small compared to the rotational frequency of the fluid as a whole (so-called geostrophic equilibrium). It is shown that only Rossby solitons are stable, while all remaining vortices are unstable and decay into geostrophic flows.