This book presents fundamental concepts and seminal results to the study of vortex filaments in equilibrium. It also presents new discoveries in quasi-2D vortex structures with applications to geophysical fluid dynamics and magnetohydrodynamics in plasmas. It fills a gap in the vortex statistics literature by simplifying the mathematical introduction to this complex topic, covering numerical methods, and exploring a wide range of applications with numerous examples. The authors have produced an introduction that is clear and easy to read, leading the reader step-by-step into this topical area. Alongside the theoretical concepts and mathematical formulations, interesting applications are discussed. This combination makes the text useful for students and researchers in mathematics and physics.

This book presents comprehensive and authoritative coverage of the wide field of concentrated vortices observed in nature and technique. The methods for research of their kinematics and dynamics are considered. Special attention is paid to the flows with helical symmetry. The authors have described models of vortex structures used for interpretation of experimental data which serve as a ground for development of theoretical and numerical approaches to vortex investigation.

This book provides an introduction to the theory of turbulence in fluids based on the representation of the flow by means of its vorticity field. It has long been understood that, at least in the case of incompressible flow, the vorticity representation is natural and physically transparent, yet the development of a theory of turbulence in this representation has been slow. The pioneering work of Onsager and of Joyce and Montgomery on the statistical mechanics of two-dimensional vortex systems has only recently been put on a firm mathematical footing, and the three-dimensional theory remains in parts speculative and even controversial. The first three chapters of the book contain a reasonably standard intro duction to homogeneous turbulence (the simplest case); a quick review of fluid mechanics is followed by a summary of the appropriate Fourier theory (more detailed than is customary in fluid mechanics) and by a summary of Kolmogorov's theory of the inertial range, slanted so as to dovetail with later vortex-based arguments. The possibility that the inertial spectrum is an equilibrium spectrum is raised.

The aim of this book is to provide beginning graduate students who completed the first two semesters of graduate-level analysis and PDE courses with a first exposure to the mathematical analysis of the incompressible Euler and Navier-Stokes equations. The book gives a concise introduction to the fundamental results in the well-posedness theory of these PDEs, leaving aside some of the technical challenges presented by bounded domains or by intricate functional spaces. Chapters 1 and 2 cover the fundamentals of the Euler theory: derivation, Eulerian and Lagrangian perspectives, vorticity, special solutions, existence theory for smooth solutions, and blowup criteria. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 cover the fundamentals of the Navier-Stokes theory: derivation, special solutions, existence theory for strong solutions, Leray theory of weak solutions, weak-strong uniqueness, existence theory of mild solutions, and Prodi-Serrin regularity criteria. Chapter 6 provides a short guide to the must-read topics, including active research directions, for an advanced graduate student working in incompressible fluids. It may be used as a roadmap for a topics course in a subsequent semester. The appendix recalls basic results from real, harmonic, and functional analysis. Each chapter concludes with exercises, making the text suitable for a one-semester graduate course. Prerequisites to this book are the first two semesters of graduate-level analysis and PDE courses.

This dissertation focuses on the development of theoretical and numerical methodologies to study equilibrium and stability in conservative fluid flows. These techniques include: a bifurcation-diagram approach to obtain the stability properties of families of steady flows; a theory of Hamiltonian resonance for vortex arrays; an efficient numerical method for computing vortices with arbitrary symmetry; and a variational principle for compressible, barotropic or baroclinic flows. We employ these theoretical and numerical approaches to obtain new results regarding the structure and stability of several fundamental vortex and wave flows. The applications that we examine involve simple representations of fundamental fluid problems, which may be regarded as prototypical of flows associated with transport and mixing in the ocean and in the atmosphere, with aquatic animal propulsion, and with the dynamics of vortices in quantum condensates. We address two issues affecting the use of a variational argument to determine stability of families of steady flows. By building on ideas from bifurcation theory, we link turning points in a velocity-impulse diagram to gains or losses of stability. We introduce concepts from imperfection theory into these problems, enabling us to reveal hidden solution branches. The resulting methodology detects exchanges of stability through an "imperfect velocity-impulse" (IVI) diagram. We apply the IVI diagram approach to wide variety of vortex and wave flows. These examples include elliptical vortices, translating and ro- tating vortex pairs, single and double vortex rows, distributed vortices, as well as steep gravity waves. For a few of the flows considered, our work yields the first available stability boundaries. In addition, the IVI diagram methodology leads us to the discovery of several new families of steady flows, which exhibit lower symmetry. We next examine conditions for the development of an oscillatory instability in two-dimensional vortex arrays. By building on the theory of Krein signatures for Hamiltonian systems, we show that a resonant instability cannot occur for one or two vortices. To predict the onset of resonance for three or more vortices, we develop a simple approximate technique, which compares favorably with full analyses. In addition, we propose a simple technique to immediately check the accuracy of a detailed linear stability analysis. All of the uniform-vorticity equilibria analyzed in this dissertation were computed using a newly developed numerical approach. This methodology, which is based on Newton iteration, employs a new discretization to radically increases the efficiency of the calculation. In addition, we introduce a procedure to remove the degeneracies in the steady vorticity equation, thus ensuring convergence for general vortex configurations. Our method enables the computation, for the first time, of steady vortices that do not exhibit any geometric symmetry, in an unbounded flow. Finally, we re-examine the variational principle that underpins the IVI diagram stability approach. We show that this principle may be obtained, in a conceptually straightforward manner, by first considering the classical principle of virtual work. This link enables us to readily formulate generalizations to compressible, barotropic and baroclinic flows.