Robust wall states in rapidly rotating Rayleigh-Benard convection

We show, using direct numerical simulations with experimentally realizable boundary conditions, that wall modes in Rayleigh-Benard convection in a rapidly rotating cylinder persist even very far from their linear onset. These nonlinear wall states survive in the presence of turbulence in the bulk and are robust with respect to changes in the shape of the boundary of the container. In this sense, these states behave much like the topologically protected states present in two-dimensional chiral systems even though rotating convection is a three-dimensional nonlinear driven dissipative system. We suggest that the robustness of this nonlinear state may provide an explanation for the strong zonal flows observed recently in experiments and simulations of rapidly rotating convection at high Rayleigh number.