Graduate Student / Postdoc Seminar

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Nonlinear Wave-Vortex Interactions in Shallow, Deep, and Quantum Fluids

Speaker: Oliver Bühler

Location: Warren Weaver Hall 1302

Date: Friday, April 13, 2012, 1 p.m.

Synopsis:

Nonlinear interactions between waves and vortices arise in many areas of fluid dynamics, with the most prominent examples probably occurring in the geophysical fluid dynamics of the atmosphere and the oceans. Indeed, our ability to predict the long-term dynamics of these systems hinges delicately on our ability to model small-scale waves and their unresolvable interactions with the large-scale vortical flow. This has led to a substantial body of wave-mean interaction theory that has been developed for these GFD problems, but which is also very useful for other applications. In this talk, I will present some of the relevant theory and various applications of it to diverse problems in fluid dynamics. Specifically, examples will include the driving of longshore currents by breaking ocean waves, the creation of deep ocean vortex motion by dissipating internal tides, the micro-mixing of small droplets using acoustic waves, and some interactions between quantized vortices and phonon waves in superfluids.