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The advection of passive tracers in a system of 4 identical point vortices is studied when the motion of the vortices is chaotic. The phenomenon of vortex-pairing has been observed and statistics of the pairing time is computed. The distribution exhibits a power-law tail with exponent $\sim 3.6$ implying finite average pairing time. This exponents is in agreement with its computed analytical estimate of 3.5. Tracer motion is studied for a chosen initial condition of the vortex system. Accessible phase space is investigated. The size of the cores around the vortices is well approximated by the minimum inter-vortex distance and stickiness to these cores is observed. We investigate the origin of stickiness which we link to the phenomenon of vortex pairing and jumps of tracers between cores. Motion within the core is considered and fluctuations are shown to scale with tracer-vortex distance $r$ as $r^{6}$. No outward or inward diffusion of tracers are observed. This investigation allows the separation of the accessible phase space in four distinct regions, each with its own specific properties: the region within the cores, the reunion of the periphery of all cores, the region where vortex motion is restricted and finally the far-field region. We speculate that the stickiness to the cores induced by vortex-pairings influences the long-time behavior of tracers and their anomalous diffusion., Comment: 18 pages, 15 figures

Dynamical and statistical properties of tracer advection are studied in a family of flows produced by three point-vortices of different signs. A collapse of all three vortices to a single point is then possible. Tracer dynamics is analyzed by numerical construction of Poincar\'{e} sections, and is found to be strongly chaotic: advection pattern in the region around the center of vorticity is dominated by a well developed stochastic sea, which grows as the vortex system approaches the collapse; at the same time, the islands of regular motion around vortices, known as vortex cores, shrink. An estimation of the core's radii from the minimum distance of vortex approach to each other is obtained. Tracer transport was found to be anomalous: for all of the three numerically investigated cases, the variance of the tracer distribution grows faster than a linear function of time, corresponding to a super-diffusive regime. The transport exponent varies with time decades, implying the presence of multi-fractal transport features. Yet, its value is never too far from 3/2, indicating some kind of universality. Statistics of Poincar\'{e} recurrences is non-Poissonian: distributions have long power-law tails. The anomalous properties of tracer statistics are the result of the complex structure of the advection phase space, in particular, of strong stickiness on the boundaries between the regions of chaotic and regular motion. The role of the different phase space structures involved in this phenomenon is analyzed. Based on this analysis, a kinetic description is constructed, which takes into account different time and space scalings by using a fractional equation., Comment: 42 pages, 24 figures

A system of three point vortices in an unbounded plane has a special family of self-similarly contracting or expanding solutions: during the motion, vortex triangle remains similar to the original one, while its area decreases (grows) at a constant rate. A contracting configuration brings three vortices to a single point in a finite time; this phenomenon known as vortex collapse is of principal importance for many-vortex systems. Dynamics of close-to-collapse vortex configurations depends on the way the collapse conditions are violated. Using an effective potential representation, a detailed quantitative analysis of all the different types of near-collapse dynamics is performed when two of the vortices are identical. We discuss time and length scales, emerging in the problem, and their behavior as the initial vortex triangle is approaching to an exact collapse configuration. Different types of critical behaviors, such as logarithmic or power-law divergences are exhibited, which emphasizes the importance of the way the collapse is approached. Period asymptotics for all singular cases are presented as functions of the initial vortices configurations. Special features of passive particle mixing by a near-collapse flows are illustrated numerically., Comment: 45 pages, 22 figures Last version of the paper with all updates