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arXiv · 2506.00621

Drift, diffusion and divergence

Laurette S. Tuckerman
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Abstract

Turbulent Taylor-Couette flow displays traces of axisymmetric Taylor vortices even at high Reynolds numbers. With this motivation, Feldmann & Avila (2025) carry out long-time numerical simulations of axisymmetric high-Reynolds-number Taylor-Couette flow. They find that the Taylor vortices, using the only degree of freedom that remains available to them, carry out Brownian motion in the axial direction, with a diffusion constant that diverges as the number of rolls is reduced below a critical value.

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Laurette S. Tuckerman. 2025-05-31. Drift, diffusion and divergence. https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2025.293

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