Hard turbulence in rotating Rayleigh-Bénard convection

We report a transition to hard turbulence in rapidly rotating Boussinesq convection at high Rayleigh and Taylor numbers. The probability density for vertical vorticity develops exponential tails, as in nonrotating hard-turbulent convection, whereas the temperature and velocity retain Gaussian distributions. The Nusselt-number scaling with Rayleigh number for the rotating hard-turbulent state is identical to that for nonrotating laboratory experiments, viz., Nu∼${\mathrm{Ra}}^{2/7}$.