Lagrangian coherent sets in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection.

Coherent circulation rolls and their relevance for the turbulent heat transfer in a two-dimensional Rayleigh-Bénard convection model are analyzed. The flow is in a closed cell of aspect ratio four at a Rayleigh number Ra=10^{6} and at a Prandtl number Pr=10. Three different Lagrangian analysis techniques based on graph Laplacians (distance spectral trajectory clustering, time-averaged diffusion maps, and finite-element based dynamic Laplacian discretization) are used to monitor the turbulent fields along trajectories of massless Lagrangian particles in the evolving turbulent convection flow. The three methods are compared to each other and the obtained coherent sets are related to results from an analysis in the Eulerian frame of reference. We show that the results of these methods agree with each other and that Lagrangian and Eulerian coherent sets form basically a disjoint union of the flow domain. Additionally, a windowed time averaging of variable interval length is performed to study the degree of coherence as a function of this additional coarse graining which removes small-scale fluctuations that cause trajectories to disperse quickly. Finally, the coherent set framework is extended to study heat transport.

On the sighting of unicorns: A variational approach to computing invariant sets in dynamical systems.

We propose to compute approximations to invariant sets in dynamical systems by minimizing an appropriate distance between a suitably selected finite set of points and its image under the dynamics. We demonstrate, through computational experiments, that this approach can successfully converge to approximations of (maximal) invariant sets of arbitrary topology, dimension, and stability, such as, e.g., saddle type invariant sets with complicated dynamics. We further propose to extend this approach by adding a Lennard-Jones type potential term to the objective function, which yields more evenly distributed approximating finite point sets, and illustrate the procedure through corresponding numerical experiments.

On fast computation of finite-time coherent sets using radial basis functions.

Finite-time coherent sets inhibit mixing over finite times. The most expensive part of the transfer operator approach to detecting coherent sets is the construction of the operator itself. We present a numerical method based on radial basis function collocation and apply it to a recent transfer operator construction [G. Froyland, "Dynamic isoperimetry and the geometry of Lagrangian coherent structures," Nonlinearity (unpublished); preprint arXiv:1411.7186] that has been designed specifically for purely advective dynamics. The construction [G. Froyland, "Dynamic isoperimetry and the geometry of Lagrangian coherent structures," Nonlinearity (unpublished); preprint arXiv:1411.7186] is based on a "dynamic" Laplace operator and minimises the boundary size of the coherent sets relative to their volume. The main advantage of our new approach is a substantial reduction in the number of Lagrangian trajectories that need to be computed, leading to large speedups in the transfer operator analysis when this computation is costly.

Transport of Mars-crossing asteroids from the quasi-Hilda region.

We employ set oriented methods in combination with graph partitioning algorithms to identify key dynamical regions in the Sun-Jupiter-particle three-body system. Transport rates from a region near the 3:2 Hilda resonance into the realm of orbits crossing Mars' orbit are computed. In contrast to common numerical approaches, our technique does not depend on single long term simulations of the underlying model. Thus, our statistical results are particularly reliable since they are not affected by a dynamical behavior which is almost nonergodic (i.e., dominated by strongly almost invariant sets).

Exploring invariant sets and invariant measures.

We propose a method to explore invariant measures of dynamical systems. The method is based on numerical tools which directly compute invariant sets using a subdivision technique, and invariant measures by a discretization of the Frobenius-Perron operator. Appropriate visualization tools help to analyze the numerical results and to understand important aspects of the underlying dynamics. This will be illustrated for examples provided by the Lorenz system. (c) 1997 American Institute of Physics.