The study of vortex flows around solid obstacles is of considerable interest
from both a theoretical and practical perspective. One geometry that has
attracted renewed attention recently is that of vortex flows past a circular
cylinder placed above a plane wall, where a stationary recirculating eddy can
form in front of the cylinder, in contradistinction to the usual case (without
the plane boundary) for which a vortex pair appears behind the cylinder. Here
we analyze the problem of vortex flows past a cylinder near a wall through the
lenses of the point-vortex model. By conformally mapping the fluid domain onto
an annular region in an auxiliary complex plane, we compute the vortex
Hamiltonian analytically in terms of certain special functions related to
elliptic theta functions. A detailed analysis of the equilibria of the model is
then presented. The location of the equilibrium in front of the cylinder is
shown to be in qualitative agreement with the experimental findings. We also
show that a topological transition occurs in phase space as the parameters of
the systems are variedComment: 17 pages, 8 figure