Math Colloquium

Our first math colloquium of the semester will be Wednesday, January 19, from 3:30-4:30.  Chad Williamson, a Truman Student, will be speaking on Understanding how fronts propagate through flowing fluids – the search for a new model. As usual, refreshments will be provided.

ABSTRACT

Advection-reaction-diffusions systems – systems consisting of a fluid
flow in which a front (perhaps a chemical reaction) is propagating
through a flow – are common in nature and range from cellular-level
processes to plankton blooms in the oceans. Reaction dynamics without
a flow present (reaction-diffusion systems) are well understood, as
are the dynamics of laminar, nonreactive fluid flows (chaotic mixing;
advection-diffusion systems). Extensions of the established theory for
reaction-diffusion systems (the so-called
Fisher–Kolmogorov–Petrowskii–Piscounov Theory), which attempt to
account for the addition of a flow, show major disagreements with
recent experimental observations. Roads the quest for a new theory may
take will be discussed, with an emphasis on the role of coherent
structures in flows (such as vortices) and tools adapted from chaotic
mixing (manifolds and lobes). The discussion will highlight both
computational and experimental research conducted in the Physics
Department at Bucknell University under Tom Solomon during the summer
of 2010, the computational component of which is ongoing here at
Truman. The work is sponsored by National Science Foundation grants
DMR-0703635 and PHY-0552790.