Laboratory study of wave turbulence under isotropic forcing

Experimental efforts to corroborate the theoretical Kolmogorov-Zakharov spectrum of surface gravity wave turbulence (WT) have encountered obstacles in the form of finite-size effects and intermittency. We investigated whether the consequences of these dynamics could be outcompeted by rigorously enforcing the assumption of WT in an idealized environment, in which we supply isotropic forcing and random-phased waves. We find that even under these conditions the wave field is modulated by dissipation and intermittency, which we study with higher-order statistics. Nevertheless, we do observe evidence of a wave-driven energy cascade beneath the strongly nonlinear and dissipative effects.