Applied Mathematics Seminar

High Reynolds number fluid flows are turbulent in practice, yet classical linear stability analysis predicts they should be laminar. This paradox remained largely unresolved for much of the 20th century. This talk will describe the explanation of subcritical transition to turbulence that emerged in the 1990s, which owed much to numerical simulations and to fundamental ideas of numerical linear algebra.

L.N. Trefethen is Professor of Numerical Analysis at Oxford University, and is Visiting Professor at the Department of Mathematics, University of Queensland, 2003-2004.