Temperature fluctuations in the Ultimate Regime of Convection

Frédéric Gauthier, Julien Salort, Olivier Bourgeois, Jean-Luc Garden, Ronald Du Puits, Andre Thess, Philippe-Emmanuel P. -E. Roche

Published 2009-05-17Version 1

A new regime of turbulent convection has been reported nearly one decade ago, based on global heat transfer measurements at very high Rayleigh numbers. We examine the signature of this "Ultimate Regime" from within the flow itself. A systematic study of probe-size corrections shows that the earlier temperature measurements within the flow were altered by an excessive size of thermometer, but not according to a theoretical model proposed in the literature. Using a probe one order of magnitude smaller than the one used previously, we find evidence that the transition to the Ultimate Regime is indeed accompanied with a clear change in the statistics of temperature fluctuations in the flow.