Hydrodynamic Flows on Curved Surfaces: Spectral Numerical Methods for Radial Manifold Shapes

We formulate hydrodynamic equations and spectrally accurate numerical methods for investigating the role of geometry in flows within two-dimensional fluid interfaces. To achieve numerical approximations having high precision and level of symmetry for radial manifold shapes, we develop spectral Galerkin methods based on hyperinterpolation with Lebedev quadratures for $L^2$-projection to spherical harmonics. We demonstrate our methods by investigating hydrodynamic responses as the surface geometry is varied. Relative to the case of a sphere, we find significant changes can occur in the observed hydrodynamic flow responses as exhibited by quantitative and topological transitions in the structure of the flow. We present numerical results based on the Rayleigh-Dissipation principle to gain further insights into these flow responses. We investigate the roles played by the geometry especially concerning the positive and negative Gaussian curvature of the interface. We provide general approaches for taking geometric effects into account for investigations of hydrodynamic phenomena within curved fluid interfaces.Comment: 14 figure

Geodesic Transport Barriers in Jupiter's Atmosphere: A Video-Based Analysis

Jupiter's zonal jets and Great Red Spot are well known from still images. Yet the planet's atmosphere is highly unsteady, which suggests that the actual material transport barriers delineating its main features should be time-dependent. Rare video footages of Jupiter's clouds provide an opportunity to verify this expectation from optically reconstructed velocity fields. Available videos, however, provide short-time and temporally aperiodic velocity fields that defy classical dynamical systems analyses focused on asymptotic features. To this end, we use here the recent theory of geodesic transport barriers to uncover finite-time mixing barriers in the wind field extracted from a video captured by NASA's Cassini space mission. More broadly, the approach described here provides a systematic and frame-invariant way to extract dynamic coherent structures from time-resolved remote observations of unsteady continua

Transport in Transitory, Three-Dimensional, Liouville Flows

We derive an action-flux formula to compute the volumes of lobes quantifying transport between past- and future-invariant Lagrangian coherent structures of n-dimensional, transitory, globally Liouville flows. A transitory system is one that is nonautonomous only on a compact time interval. This method requires relatively little Lagrangian information about the codimension-one surfaces bounding the lobes, relying only on the generalized actions of loops on the lobe boundaries. These are easily computed since the vector fields are autonomous before and after the time-dependent transition. Two examples in three-dimensions are studied: a transitory ABC flow and a model of a microdroplet moving through a microfluidic channel mixer. In both cases the action-flux computations of transport are compared to those obtained using Monte Carlo methods.Comment: 30 pages, 16 figures, 1 table, submitted to SIAM J. Appl. Dyn. Sy

Oscillatory migration of accreting protoplanets driven by a 3D distortion of the gas flow

Context. The dynamics of a low-mass protoplanet accreting solids is influenced by the heating torque, which was found to suppress inward migration in protoplanetary disks with constant opacities. Aims. We investigate the differences of the heating torque between disks with constant and temperature-dependent opacities. Methods. Interactions of a super-Earth-sized protoplanet with the gas disk are explored using 3D radiation hydrodynamic simulations. Results. Accretion heating of the protoplanet creates a hot underdense region in the surrounding gas, leading to misalignment of the local density and pressure gradients. As a result, the 3D gas flow is perturbed and some of the streamlines form a retrograde spiral rising above the protoplanet. In the constant-opacity disk, the perturbed flow reaches a steady state and the underdense gas responsible for the heating torque remains distributed in accordance with previous studies. If the opacity is non-uniform, however, the differences in the disk structure can lead to more vigorous streamline distortion and eventually to a flow instability. The underdense gas develops a one-sided asymmetry which circulates around the protoplanet in a retrograde fashion. The heating torque thus strongly oscillates in time and does not on average counteract inward migration. Conclusions. The torque variations make the radial drift of the protoplanet oscillatory, consisting of short intervals of alternating rapid inward and outward migration. We speculate that transitions between the positive and oscillatory heating torque may occur in specific disk regions susceptible to vertical convection, resulting in the convergent migration of multiple planetary embryos.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A, 19 pages, 18 figure