Viscous evolution of point vortex equilibria: The collinear state

When point vortex equilibria of the 2D Euler equations are used as initial conditions for the corre- sponding Navier-Stokes equations (viscous), typically an interesting dynamical process unfolds at short and intermediate time scales, before the long time single peaked, self-similar Oseen vortex state dom- inates. In this paper, we describe the viscous evolution of a collinear three vortex structure that cor- responds to an inviscid point vortex fixed equilibrium. Using a multi-Gaussian 'core-growth' type of model, we show that the system immediately begins to rotate unsteadily, a mechanism we attribute to a 'viscously induced' instability. We then examine in detail the qualitative and quantitative evolution of the system as it evolves toward the long-time asymptotic Lamb-Oseen state, showing the sequence of topological bifurcations that occur both in a fixed reference frame, and in an appropriately chosen rotating reference frame. The evolution of passive particles in this viscously evolving flow is shown and interpreted in relation to these evolving streamline patterns.Comment: 17 pages, 15 figure

A Variational Principle Based Study of KPP Minimal Front Speeds in Random Shears

Variational principle for Kolmogorov-Petrovsky-Piskunov (KPP) minimal front speeds provides an efficient tool for statistical speed analysis, as well as a fast and accurate method for speed computation. A variational principle based analysis is carried out on the ensemble of KPP speeds through spatially stationary random shear flows inside infinite channel domains. In the regime of small root mean square (rms) shear amplitude, the enhancement of the ensemble averaged KPP front speeds is proved to obey the quadratic law under certain shear moment conditions. Similarly, in the large rms amplitude regime, the enhancement follows the linear law. In particular, both laws hold for the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process in case of two dimensional channels. An asymptotic ensemble averaged speed formula is derived in the small rms regime and is explicit in case of the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process of the shear. Variational principle based computation agrees with these analytical findings, and allows further study on the speed enhancement distributions as well as the dependence of enhancement on the shear covariance. Direct simulations in the small rms regime suggest quadratic speed enhancement law for non-KPP nonlinearities.Comment: 28 pages, 14 figures update: fixed typos, refined estimates in section

Chemotactic Collapse and Mesenchymal Morphogenesis

We study the effect of chemotactic signaling among mesenchymal cells. We show that the particular physiology of the mesenchymal cells allows one-dimensional collapse in contrast to the case of bacteria, and that the mesenchymal morphogenesis represents thus a more complex type of pattern formation than those found in bacterial colonies. We finally compare our theoretical predictions with recent in vitro experiments

Apoptotic changes in the myocardium in the course of experimentally-induced pleurisy

The secreted proinflammatory interleukins IL-1, IL-6 and TNF in the course of experimentally-induced pleurisy can be the cause of pathological changes in the ultrastructure of cardiac muscle and of apoptosis. The pleurisy was induced in rats by means of carrageenin. The scraps of cardiac muscle obtained during the inflammatory reaction in the pleura were analysed by means of an electron microscope. The scraps were also stained with the TUNEL method in order to find the apoptotic foci. It was proved by the experiment that the inflammatory process affected mitochondria in the cardiomyocytes, enhanced collagen fibre synthesis and contributed to the formation of apoptotic foci in the cardiac muscle

Equation-free implementation of statistical moment closures

We present a general numerical scheme for the practical implementation of statistical moment closures suitable for modeling complex, large-scale, nonlinear systems. Building on recently developed equation-free methods, this approach numerically integrates the closure dynamics, the equations of which may not even be available in closed form. Although closure dynamics introduce statistical assumptions of unknown validity, they can have significant computational advantages as they typically have fewer degrees of freedom and may be much less stiff than the original detailed model. The closure method can in principle be applied to a wide class of nonlinear problems, including strongly-coupled systems (either deterministic or stochastic) for which there may be no scale separation. We demonstrate the equation-free approach for implementing entropy-based Eyink-Levermore closures on a nonlinear stochastic partial differential equation.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Coercivity and stability results for an extended Navier-Stokes system

In this article we study a system of equations that is known to {\em extend} Navier-Stokes dynamics in a well-posed manner to velocity fields that are not necessarily divergence-free. Our aim is to contribute to an understanding of the role of divergence and pressure in developing energy estimates capable of controlling the nonlinear terms. We address questions of global existence and stability in bounded domains with no-slip boundary conditions. Even in two space dimensions, global existence is open in general, and remains so, primarily due to the lack of a self-contained $L^2$ energy estimate. However, through use of new $H^1$ coercivity estimates for the linear equations, we establish a number of global existence and stability results, including results for small divergence and a time-discrete scheme. We also prove global existence in 2D for any initial data, provided sufficient divergence damping is included.Comment: 29 pages, no figure

Vanishing viscosity limit for an expanding domain in space

We study the limiting behavior of viscous incompressible flows when the fluid domain is allowed to expand as the viscosity vanishes. We describe precise conditions under which the limiting flow satisfies the full space Euler equations. The argument is based on truncation and on energy estimates, following the structure of the proof of Kato's criterion for the vanishing viscosity limit. This work complements previous work by the authors, see [Kelliher, Comm. Math. Phys. 278 (2008), 753-773] and [arXiv:0801.4935v1].Comment: 23 pages, submitted for publicatio

The analytic structure of 2D Euler flow at short times

Using a very high precision spectral calculation applied to the incompressible and inviscid flow with initial condition $\psi_0(x_1, x_2) = \cos x_1+\cos 2x_2$, we find that the width $\delta(t)$ of its analyticity strip follows a $\ln(1/t)$ law at short times over eight decades. The asymptotic equation governing the structure of spatial complex-space singularities at short times (Frisch, Matsumoto and Bec 2003, J.Stat.Phys. 113, 761--781) is solved by a high-precision expansion method. Strong numerical evidence is obtained that singularities have infinite vorticity and lie on a complex manifold which is constructed explicitly as an envelope of analyticity disks.Comment: 19 pages, 14 figures, published versio

Absence of squirt singularities for the multi-phase Muskat problem

In this paper we study the evolution of multiple fluids with different constant densities in porous media. This physical scenario is known as the Muskat and the (multi-phase) Hele-Shaw problems. In this context we prove that the fluids do not develop squirt singularities.Comment: 16 page