Multipolar spherical and cylindrical vortices

29 pages, 8 figures, 4 appendixes, supplementary materials https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2022.73Multipolar spherical solutions to the three-dimensional steady vorticity equation are provided. These solutions are based on the separation of radial and angular contributions in terms of the spherical Bessel functions and vector spherical harmonics, respectively. In this set of multipolar vortex solutions, the Hicks–Moffatt swirling vortex is categorized as a vortex of degree ℓ=1 and therefore as a vortex dipole. This swirling vortex is the three-dimensional dipole in spherical geometry equivalent to the two-dimensional Lamb–Chaplygin dipole in polar geometry. The three-dimensional dipole solution admits two linearly superposable solutions. The first one is a Trkalian flow and the second one is a cylindrical solid-body rotation with swirl. The higher ℓ>1 multipolar vortices found are either vanishing-helicity vortices or Trkalian flow vortices. The multipolar Trkalian flows admit two circular polarizations given by the sign of the wavenumber k. It is also found that piecewise vortex solutions, consisting of interior rotational and exterior potential flow domains, satisfying velocity continuity conditions at the vortex boundary, are possible in the general multipolar Trkalian spherical vortex. A particular polarized dipole solution in three-dimensional cylindrical geometry, consisting as well in the superposition of a Trkalian flow and a rigid motion, is also analysed. This swirling vortex may be interpreted as the three-dimensional dipole in cylindrical geometry equivalent to the two-dimensional Lamb–Chaplygin dipole in polar geometryPartial support for this study was obtained through project RTI2018-100844-B-C33 (Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities). I acknowledge the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S)Peer reviewe