Dynamic isoperimetry and the geometry of Lagrangian coherent structures

Abstract

The study of transport and mixing processes in dynamical systems is particularly important for the analysis of mathematical models of physical systems. We propose a novel, direct geometric method to identify subsets of phase space that remain strongly coherent over a finite time duration. This new method is based on a dynamic extension of classical (static) isoperimetric problems; the latter are concerned with identifying submanifolds with the smallest boundary size relative to their volume. The present work introduces \emph{dynamic} isoperimetric problems; the study of sets with small boundary size relative to volume \emph{as they are evolved by a general dynamical system}. We formulate and prove dynamic versions of the fundamental (static) isoperimetric (in)equalities; a dynamic Federer-Fleming theorem and a dynamic Cheeger inequality. We introduce a new dynamic Laplacian operator and describe a computational method to identify coherent sets based on eigenfunctions of the dynamic Laplacian. Our results include formal mathematical statements concerning geometric properties of finite-time coherent sets, whose boundaries can be regarded as Lagrangian coherent structures. The computational advantages of our new approach are a well-separated spectrum for the dynamic Laplacian, and flexibility in appropriate numerical approximation methods. Finally, we demonstrate that the dynamic Laplacian operator can be realised as a zero-diffusion limit of a newly advanced probabilistic transfer operator method (Froyland, 2013) for finding coherent sets, which is based on small diffusion. Thus, the present approach sits naturally alongside the probabilistic approach (Froyland, 2013), and adds a formal geometric interpretation.