Lagrangian coherent structures and plasma transport processes

A dynamical system framework is used to describe transport processes in plasmas embedded in a magnetic field. For periodic systems with one degree of freedom, the Poincare map provides a splitting of the phase space into regions where particles have different kinds of motion: periodic, quasi-periodic or chaotic. The boundaries of these regions are transport barriers, i.e. a trajectory cannot cross such boundaries throughout the evolution of the system. Lagrangian coherent structures generalize this method to systems with the most general time dependence, splitting the phase space into regions with different qualitative behaviours. This leads to the definition of finite-time transport barriers, i.e. trajectories cannot cross the barrier for a finite amount of time. This methodology can be used to identify fast recirculating regions in the dynamical system and to characterize the transport between them.