Mixing in Geophysical Turbulence

Prof. George Haller, Division of Applied Mathematics, Brown University

The emergence of robust coherent structures in two-dimensional turbulence is a well-known phenomenon. In this talk, we give a Lagrangian description of these structures that emphasizes their effect on fluid mixing. We describe recent analytic techniques for the extraction of Lagrangian coherent structures from finite-time flow data. As applications, we discuss mixing in turbulence simulations and laboratory experiments.