Topological structure of chaotic flows from tracer trajectories

GISELA CHARÓ; DENISSE SCIAMARELLA; GUILLERMO ARTANA

Jornada; LIA Physics and Mechanics of Fluids (FMF/PMF); 2017

An objective method is proposed to identify Lagrangian Coherent Sets from sparse data, on the basis of the topological program developed for the analysis of dissipative dynamical systems from finite time-series. Regions that remain unmixed with the surrounding fluid can be inferred from the homological description of the branched manifold organizing data in reconstructed phase space. Persistence barcodes are used to automate the characterization of the point-cloud constructed from each trajectory. As proof of concept, the method is applied to periodic and aperiodic flow-cases generated with the double gyre equations. The identified sets coincide with those that can be computed using dense methods, or visualized using streaklines.