How coherent are the vortices of two-dimensional turbulence?

We use recent developments in the theory of finite-time dynamical systems to objectively locate the material boundaries of coherent vortices in two-dimensional Navier--Stokes turbulence. We show that these boundaries are optimal in the sense that any closed curve in their exterior will lose coherence under material advection. Through a detailed comparison, we find that other available Eulerian and Lagrangian techniques significantly underestimate the size of each coherent vortex.Comment: revised versio

Attracting and repelling Lagrangian coherent structures from a single computation

Hyperbolic Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCSs) are locally most repelling or most attracting material surfaces in a finite-time dynamical system. To identify both types of hyperbolic LCSs at the same time instance, the standard practice has been to compute repelling LCSs from future data and attracting LCSs from past data. This approach tacitly assumes that coherent structures in the flow are fundamentally recurrent, and hence gives inconsistent results for temporally aperiodic systems. Here we resolve this inconsistency by showing how both repelling and attracting LCSs are computable at the same time instance from a single forward or a single backward run. These LCSs are obtained as surfaces normal to the weakest and strongest eigenvectors of the Cauchy-Green strain tensor.Comment: Under consideration for publication in Chaos/AI

Do Finite-Size Lyapunov Exponents Detect Coherent Structures?

Ridges of the Finite-Size Lyapunov Exponent (FSLE) field have been used as indicators of hyperbolic Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCSs). A rigorous mathematical link between the FSLE and LCSs, however, has been missing. Here we prove that an FSLE ridge satisfying certain conditions does signal a nearby ridge of some Finite-Time Lyapunov Exponent (FTLE) field, which in turn indicates a hyperbolic LCS under further conditions. Other FSLE ridges violating our conditions, however, are seen to be false positives for LCSs. We also find further limitations of the FSLE in Lagrangian coherence detection, including ill-posedness, artificial jump-discontinuities, and sensitivity with respect to the computational time step.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures, v3: corrects the z-axis labels of Fig. 2 (left) that appears in the version published in Chao