Chaotic Advection and the Emergence of Tori in the K\"uppers-Lortz State

TL;DR

This paper models the Lagrangian dynamics of the K"uppers-Lortz state in rotating convection, revealing how invariant tori and chaotic regions emerge depending on the ratio of switching to roll turnover times, with implications for understanding complex flow patterns.

Contribution

It introduces a phenomenological map capturing the transition from invariant tori to chaos in K"uppers-Lortz states, extending analysis to smooth models beyond instantaneous switching.

Findings

Invariant tori dominate at small switching times.

Dynamics become fully chaotic at large switching times.

Chaotic orbits exhibit normal diffusion.

Abstract

Motivated by the roll-switching behavior observed in rotating Rayleigh-B\'enard convection, we define a K\"uppers-Lortz (K-L) state as a volume-preserving flow with periodic roll switching. For an individual roll state, the Lagrangian particle trajectories are periodic. In a system with roll-switching, the particles can exhibit three-dimensional, chaotic motion. We study a simple phenomenological map that models the Lagrangian dynamics in a K-L state. When the roll axes differ by $120^{\circ}$ in the plane of rotation, we show that the phase space is dominated by invariant tori if the ratio of switching time to roll turnover time is small. When this parameter approaches zero these tori limit onto the classical hexagonal convection patterns, and, as it gets large, the dynamics becomes fully chaotic and well-mixed. For intermediate values, there are interlinked toroidal and poloidal structures separated by chaotic regions. We also compute the exit time distributions and show that the unbounded chaotic orbits are normally diffusive. Although the map presumes instantaneous switching between roll states, we show that the qualitative features of the flow persist when the model has smooth, overlapping time-dependence for the roll amplitudes (the Busse-Heikes model).