Symmetry reduction by the method of slices is applied to pipe flow in order
to quotient the stream-wise translation and azimuthal rotation symmetries of
turbulent flow states. Within the symmetry-reduced state space, all travelling
wave solutions reduce to equilibria, and all relative periodic orbits reduce to
periodic orbits. Projections of these solutions and their unstable manifolds
from their ∞-dimensional symmetry-reduced state space onto suitably
chosen 2- or 3-dimensional subspaces reveal their interrelations and the role
they play in organising turbulence in wall-bounded shear flows. Visualisations
of the flow within the slice and its linearisation at equilibria enable us to
trace out the unstable manifolds, determine close recurrences, identify
connections between different travelling wave solutions, and find, for the
first time for pipe flows, relative periodic orbits that are embedded within
the chaotic attractor, which capture turbulent dynamics at transitional
Reynolds numbers.Comment: 24 pages, 12 figure