Convection-enhanced diffusion for random flows

We analyze the effective diffusivity of a passive scalar in a two-dimensional, steady, incompressible random flow that has mean zero and a stationary stream function. We show that in the limit of small diffusivity or large Peclet number, with convection dominating, there is substantial enhancement of the effective diffusivity. Our analysis is based on some new variational principles for convection diffusion problems and on some facts from continuum percolation theory, some of which are widely believed to be correct but have not been proved yet. We show in detail how the variational principles convert information about the geometry of the level lines of the random stream function into properties of the effective diffusivity and substantiate the result of Isichenko and Kalda that the effective diffusivity behaves likeɛ3/13 when the molecular diffusivityɛ is small, assuming some percolation-theoretic facts. We also analyze the effective diffusivity for a special class of convective flows, random cellular flows, where the facts from percolation theory are well established and their use in the variational principles is more direct than for general random flows.

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