Interaction of chaotic advection and diffusion (Q1890843)

The effect of molecular diffusion on the dispersion process in both unbounded and bounded flow domains is studied. In unbounded domains molecular diffusion permits tracer particles to sample regions of both regular and chaotic motion. It is shown that in unbounded domains diffusion can either enhance or diminish the rate of dispersion with respect to non-diffusive tracers. In bounded domains, the general feature of the interaction between chaotic advection and diffusion is diminishing of the duration of the transient phase leading to some asymptotic steady- state. The scaling for the transient period in the homogenization process and the scaling for the pre-asymptotic stage are analyzed, too.