Optimal wall-to-wall transport by incompressible flows

DOI10.1103/PHYSREVLETT.118.264502MaRDI QIDQ6280901WikidataFDO

Publication date 15 December 2016

Abstract: We consider wall-to-wall transport of a passive tracer by divergence-free velocity vector fields

m a t h b f u

. Given an enstrophy budget

l a n g l e | a b l a m a t h b f u |^{2} a n g l e l e P e^{2}

we construct steady two-dimensional flows that transport at rates

N u (m a t h b f u) g t r s i m P e^{2 / 3} / (l o g P e)^{4 / 3}

in the large enstrophy limit. Combined with the known upper bound

N u (m a t h b f u) l e s s s i m P e^{2 / 3}

for any such enstrophy-constrained flow, we conclude that maximally transporting flows satisfy

N u s i m P e^{2 / 3}

up to possible logarithmic corrections. Combined with known transport bounds in the context of Rayleigh-B'enard convection this establishes that while suitable flows approaching the "ultimate" heat transport scaling

N u s i m R a^{1 / 2}

exist, they are not always realizable as buoyancy-driven flows. The result is obtained by exploiting a connection between the wall-to-wall optimal transport problem and a closely related class of singularly perturbed variational problems arising in the study of energy-driven pattern formation in materials science.

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