Energy Spectrum of Quasi-Geostrophic Turbulence

We consider the energy spectrum of a quasi-geostrophic model of forced, rotating turbulent flow. We provide a rigorous a priori bound E(k) <= Ck^{-2} valid for wave numbers that are smaller than a wave number associated to the forcing injection scale. This upper bound separates this spectrum from the Kolmogorov-Kraichnan k^{-{5/3}} energy spectrum that is expected in a two-dimensional Navier-Stokes inverse cascade. Our bound provides theoretical support for the k^{-2} spectrum observed in recent experiments

Global well-posedness for the critical 2D dissipative quasi-geostrophic equation

We give an elementary proof of the global well-posedness for the critical 2D dissipative quasi-geostrophic equation. The argument is based on a non-local maximum principle involving appropriate moduli of continuity.Comment: 7 page

Particle trajectories in linearized irrotational shallow water flows

We investigate the particle trajectories in an irrotational shallow water flow over a flat bed as periodic waves propagate on the water's free surface. Within the linear water wave theory, we show that there are no closed orbits for the water particles beneath the irrotational shallow water waves. Depending on the strength of underlying uniform current, we obtain that some particle trajectories are undulating path to the right or to the left, some are looping curves with a drift to the right and others are parabolic curves or curves which have only one loop

On periodic water waves with Coriolis effects and isobaric streamlines

In this paper we prove that solutions of the f-plane approximation for equatorial geophysical deep water waves, which have the property that the pressure is constant along the streamlines and do not possess stagnation points,are Gerstner-type waves. Furthermore, for waves traveling over a flat bed, we prove that there are only laminar flow solutions with these properties.Comment: To appear in Journal of Nonlinear Mathematical Physics; 15 page

Open-closed field theories, string topology, and Hochschild homology

In this expository paper we discuss a project regarding the string topology of a manifold, that was inspired by recent work of Moore-Segal, Costello, and Hopkins and Lurie, on "open-closed topological conformal field theories". Given a closed, oriented manifold M, we describe the "string topology category" S_M, which is enriched over chain complexes over a fixed field k. The objects of S_M are connected, closed, oriented submanifolds N of M, and the complex of morphisms between N_1 and N_2 is a chain complex homotopy equivalent to the singular chains C_*(P_{N_1, N_2}), where C_*(P_{N_1, N_2}) is the space of paths in M that start in N_1 and end in N_2. The composition pairing in this category is a chain model for the open string topology operations of Sullivan and expanded upon by Harrelson, and Ramirez. We will describe a calculation yielding that the Hochschild homology of the category S_M is the homology of the free loop space, LM. Another part of the project is to calculate the Hochschild cohomology of the open string topology chain algebras C_*(P_{N,N}) when M is simply connected, and relate the resulting calculation to H_*(LM). We also discuss a spectrum level analogue of the above results and calculations, as well as their relations to various Fukaya categories of the cotangent bundle T^*M.Comment: 25 pages, 11 figures. To appear in, "Alpine perspectives on algebraic topology", edited by C. Ausoni, K. Hess, and J. Scherer, Contemp. Math., AM

On the particle paths and the stagnation points in small-amplitude deep-water waves

In order to obtain quite precise information about the shape of the particle paths below small-amplitude gravity waves travelling on irrotational deep water, analytic solutions of the nonlinear differential equation system describing the particle motion are provided. All these solutions are not closed curves. Some particle trajectories are peakon-like, others can be expressed with the aid of the Jacobi elliptic functions or with the aid of the hyperelliptic functions. Remarks on the stagnation points of the small-amplitude irrotational deep-water waves are also made.Comment: to appear in J. Math. Fluid Mech. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1106.382

Equations of the Camassa-Holm Hierarchy

The squared eigenfunctions of the spectral problem associated with the Camassa-Holm (CH) equation represent a complete basis of functions, which helps to describe the inverse scattering transform for the CH hierarchy as a generalized Fourier transform (GFT). All the fundamental properties of the CH equation, such as the integrals of motion, the description of the equations of the whole hierarchy, and their Hamiltonian structures, can be naturally expressed using the completeness relation and the recursion operator, whose eigenfunctions are the squared solutions. Using the GFT, we explicitly describe some members of the CH hierarchy, including integrable deformations for the CH equation. We also show that solutions of some $(1+2)$ - dimensional members of the CH hierarchy can be constructed using results for the inverse scattering transform for the CH equation. We give an example of the peakon solution of one such equation.Comment: 10 page

A stochastic-Lagrangian particle system for the Navier-Stokes equations

This paper is based on a formulation of the Navier-Stokes equations developed by P. Constantin and the first author (\texttt{arxiv:math.PR/0511067}, to appear), where the velocity field of a viscous incompressible fluid is written as the expected value of a stochastic process. In this paper, we take $N$ copies of the above process (each based on independent Wiener processes), and replace the expected value with $\frac{1}{N}$ times the sum over these $N$ copies. (We remark that our formulation requires one to keep track of $N$ stochastic flows of diffeomorphisms, and not just the motion of $N$ particles.) We prove that in two dimensions, this system of interacting diffeomorphisms has (time) global solutions with initial data in the space \holderspace{1}{\alpha} which consists of differentiable functions whose first derivative is $\alpha$ H\"older continuous (see Section \ref{sGexist} for the precise definition). Further, we show that as $N \to \infty$ the system converges to the solution of Navier-Stokes equations on any finite interval $[0,T]$. However for fixed $N$, we prove that this system retains roughly $O(\frac{1}{N})$ times its original energy as $t \to \infty$. Hence the limit $N \to \infty$ and $T\to \infty$ do not commute. For general flows, we only provide a lower bound to this effect. In the special case of shear flows, we compute the behaviour as $t \to \infty$ explicitly.Comment: v3: Typo fixes, and a few stylistic changes. 17 pages, 2 figure