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