Transport of a Passive Scalar and Lagrangian Chaos
in a Hamiltonian Hydrodynamic System

S. D. Danilov, V. A. Dovzhenko, and I. G. Yakushkin*

Oboukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 109017 Russia
*e-mail: yakushk@omega.ifaran.ru

Received January 20, 2000

Abstract—An experimental and numerical study is made of the chaotic behavior of Lagrangian trajectories and
transport of a passive tracer in a quasi-two-dimensional four-vortex flow with a periodic time dependence of
the Euler velocity field. Quantitative measurements are made of tracer transport between isolated vortices in
physical space and in “action” variable space. The theory of adiabatic chaos is used to interpret the measure-
ments. The simplest phenomenological models of liquid particle random walks are proposed to describe the
anomalous transport in terms of the action. © 2000 MAIK “Nauka/Interperiodica”.

Pleiades Publishing home page | journal home page | top

If you have any problems with this server, contact webmaster.