968 research outputs found
An analytical study of transport, mixing and chaos in an unsteady vortical flow
We examine the transport properties of a particular two-dimensional, inviscid incompressible flow using dynamical systems techniques. The velocity field is time periodic and consists of the field induced by a vortex pair plus an oscillating strainrate field. In the absence of the strain-rate field the vortex pair moves with a constant velocity and carries with it a constant body of fluid. When the strain-rate field is added the picture changes dramatically; fluid is entrained and detrained from the neighbourhood of the vortices and chaotic particle motion occurs. We investigate the mechanism for this phenomenon and study the transport and mixing of fluid in this flow. Our work consists of both numerical and analytical studies. The analytical studies include the interpretation of the invariant manifolds as the underlying structure which govern the transport. For small values of strain-rate amplitude we use Melnikov's technique to investigate the behaviour of the manifolds as the parameters of the problem change and to prove the existence of a horseshoe map and thus the existence of chaotic particle paths in the flow. Using the Melnikov technique once more we develop an analytical estimate of the flux rate into and out of the vortex neighbourhood. We then develop a technique for determining the residence time distribution for fluid particles near the vortices that is valid for arbitrary strainrate amplitudes. The technique involves an understanding of the geometry of the tangling of the stable and unstable manifolds and results in a dramatic reduction in computational effort required for the determination of the residence time distributions. Additionally, we investigate the total stretch of material elements while they are in the vicinity of the vortex pair, using this quantity as a measure of the effect of the horseshoes on trajectories passing through this region. The numerical work verifies the analytical predictions regarding the structure of the invariant manifolds, the mechanism for entrainment and detrainment and the flux rate
Symmetry breaking perturbations and strange attractors
The asymmetrically forced, damped Duffing oscillator is introduced as a
prototype model for analyzing the homoclinic tangle of symmetric dissipative
systems with \textit{symmetry breaking} disturbances. Even a slight fixed
asymmetry in the perturbation may cause a substantial change in the asymptotic
behavior of the system, e.g. transitions from two sided to one sided strange
attractors as the other parameters are varied. Moreover, slight asymmetries may
cause substantial asymmetries in the relative size of the basins of attraction
of the unforced nearly symmetric attracting regions. These changes seems to be
associated with homoclinic bifurcations. Numerical evidence indicates that
\textit{strange attractors} appear near curves corresponding to specific
secondary homoclinic bifurcations. These curves are found using analytical
perturbational tools
Universal behaviour of entrainment due to coherent structures in turbulent shear flow
I suggest a solution to a persistent mystery in the physics of turbulent
shear flows: cumulus clouds rise to towering heights, practically without
entraining the ambient medium, while apparently similar turbulent jets in
general lose their identity within a small distance through entrainment and
mixing. From dynamical systems computations on a model chaotic vortical flow, I
show that entrainment and mixing due to coherent structures depend sensitively
on the relative speeds of different portions of the flow. A small change in
these speeds, effected for example by heating, drastically alters the sizes of
the KAM tori and the chaotic mixing region. The entrainment rate and, hence,
the lifetime of a turbulent shear flow, shows a universal, non-monotone
dependence on the heating.Comment: Preprint replaced in order to add the following comment: accepted for
publication in Phys. Rev. Let
Non-ergodicity of the motion in three dimensional steep repelling dispersing potentials
It is demonstrated numerically that smooth three degrees of freedom
Hamiltonian systems which are arbitrarily close to three dimensional strictly
dispersing billiards (Sinai billiards) have islands of effective stability, and
hence are non-ergodic. The mechanism for creating the islands are corners of
the billiard domain.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Chao
Spatiotemporal Modeling of Nursery Habitat Using Bayesian Inference: Environmental Drivers of Juvenile Blue Crab Abundance
Nursery grounds provide conditions favorable for growth and survival of juvenile fish and crustaceans through abundant food resources and refugia, and enhance secondary production of populations. While small-scale studies remain important tools to assess nursery value of structured habitats and environmental factors, targeted applications that unify survey data over large spatial and temporal scales are vital to generalize inference of nursery function, identify highly productive regions, and inform management strategies. Using 21 years of spatio-temporally indexed survey data (i.e., water chemistry, turbidity, blue crab, and predator abundance) and GIS information on potential nursery habitats (i.e., seagrass, salt marsh, and unvegetated shallow bottom), we constructed five Bayesian hierarchical models with varying spatial and temporal dependence structures to infer variation in nursery habitat value for young juveniles (20–40 mm carapace width) of the blue crab Callinectes sapidus within three tributaries (James, York and Rappahannock Rivers) in lower Chesapeake Bay. Out-of-sample predictions of juvenile blue crab counts from a model considering fully nonseparable spatiotemporal dependence outperformed predictions from simpler models. Salt marsh surface area and turbidity were the strongest determinants of crab abundance (positive association in both cases). Highest crab abundances occurred near the turbidity maximum where relative salt marsh area was greatest. Relative seagrass area, which has been emphasized as the most valuable nursery in studies conducted at small spatial scales, was not associated with high crab abundance within the three tributaries. Hence, salt marshes should be considered a key nursery habitat for the blue crab, even where extensive seagrass beds occur. The patterns between juvenile blue crab abundance and environmental variables also indicated that identification of nurseries should be based on investigations at broad spatial and temporal scales incorporating multiple potential nursery habitats, and based on statistical analyses that address spatial and temporal statistical dependence
Computational Method for Phase Space Transport with Applications to Lobe Dynamics and Rate of Escape
Lobe dynamics and escape from a potential well are general frameworks
introduced to study phase space transport in chaotic dynamical systems. While
the former approach studies how regions of phase space are transported by
reducing the flow to a two-dimensional map, the latter approach studies the
phase space structures that lead to critical events by crossing periodic orbit
around saddles. Both of these frameworks require computation with curves
represented by millions of points-computing intersection points between these
curves and area bounded by the segments of these curves-for quantifying the
transport and escape rate. We present a theory for computing these intersection
points and the area bounded between the segments of these curves based on a
classification of the intersection points using equivalence class. We also
present an alternate theory for curves with nontransverse intersections and a
method to increase the density of points on the curves for locating the
intersection points accurately.The numerical implementation of the theory
presented herein is available as an open source software called Lober. We used
this package to demonstrate the application of the theory to lobe dynamics that
arises in fluid mechanics, and rate of escape from a potential well that arises
in ship dynamics.Comment: 33 pages, 17 figure
Global Superdiffusion of Weak Chaos
A class of kicked rotors is introduced, exhibiting accelerator-mode islands
(AIs) and {\em global} superdiffusion for {\em arbitrarily weak} chaos. The
corresponding standard maps are shown to be exactly related to generalized web
maps taken modulo an ``oblique cylinder''. Then, in a case that the web-map
orbit structure is periodic in the phase plane, the AIs are essentially {\em
normal} web islands folded back into the cylinder. As a consequence, chaotic
orbits sticking around the AI boundary are accelerated {\em only} when they
traverse tiny {\em ``acceleration spots''}. This leads to chaotic flights
having a quasiregular {\em steplike} structure. The global weak-chaos
superdiffusion is thus basically different in nature from the strong-chaos one
in the usual standard and web maps.Comment: REVTEX, 4 Figures: fig1.jpg, fig2.ps, fig3.ps, fig4.p
Approximating multi-dimensional Hamiltonian flows by billiards
Consider a family of smooth potentials , which, in the limit
, become a singular hard-wall potential of a multi-dimensional
billiard. We define auxiliary billiard domains that asymptote, as
to the original billiard, and provide asymptotic expansion of
the smooth Hamiltonian solution in terms of these billiard approximations. The
asymptotic expansion includes error estimates in the norm and an
iteration scheme for improving this approximation. Applying this theory to
smooth potentials which limit to the multi-dimensional close to ellipsoidal
billiards, we predict when the separatrix splitting persists for various types
of potentials
Heteroclinic intersections between Invariant Circles of Volume-Preserving Maps
We develop a Melnikov method for volume-preserving maps with codimension one
invariant manifolds. The Melnikov function is shown to be related to the flux
of the perturbation through the unperturbed invariant surface. As an example,
we compute the Melnikov function for a perturbation of a three-dimensional map
that has a heteroclinic connection between a pair of invariant circles. The
intersection curves of the manifolds are shown to undergo bifurcations in
homologyComment: LaTex with 10 eps figure
Adaptive Sampling Approach to the Negative Sign Problem in the Auxiliary Field Quantum Monte Carlo Method
We propose a new sampling method to calculate the ground state of interacting
quantum systems. This method, which we call the adaptive sampling quantum monte
carlo (ASQMC) method utilises information from the high temperature density
matrix derived from the monte carlo steps. With the ASQMC method, the negative
sign ratio is greatly reduced and it becomes zero in the limit
goes to zero even without imposing any constraint such like the constraint path
(CP) condition. Comparisons with numerical results obtained by using other
methods are made and we find the ASQMC method gives accurate results over wide
regions of physical parameters values.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure
- …