Passive fields and particles in chaotic flows

Abstract

Two examples for the interplay between chaotic dynamics and stochastic forces within hydrodynamical systems are considered. The first case concerns the relaxation to equilibrium of a concentration field subject to both chaotic advection and molecular diffusion. The concentration field develops filamentary structures and the decay rate depends non-monotonically on the diffusion strength. The second example concerns polymers, modelled as particles with an internal degree of freedom, in a chaotic flow. The length distribution of the polymers turns out to follow a power law with an exponent that depends on the difference between Lyapunov exponent and internal relaxation rate.