CHAOTIC STREAMLINES IN CONVECTIVE CELLS

Streamlines in Rayleigh-Benard cells are investigated. The emergence of tori and a robust chaotic region surrounding these tori in the Arter flow are studied. One may construct a Hamiltonian of the flow, which oscillates on a fast time scale, and whose average is conserved along the invariant tori. The chaotic region arises due to the intersection of unstable manifolds emanating from stagnation points, with constant average Hamiltonian surfaces. The scaling of the size of the chaotic region with the nonintegrability parameter is defined by the location of the stagnation points.