It is difficult to mix solutions in microchannels. Under typical operating conditions, flows in these channels are laminar-the spontaneous fluctuations of velocity that tend to homogenize fluids in turbulent flows are absent, and molecular diffusion across the channels is slow. We present a passive method for mixing streams of steady pressure-driven flows in microchannels at low Reynolds number. Using this method, the length of the channel required for mixing grows only logarithmically with the Péclet number, and hydrodynamic dispersion along the channel is reduced relative to that in a simple, smooth channel. This method uses bas-relief structures on the floor of the channel that are easily fabricated with commonly used methods of planar lithography.

We present a technique for describing the global behaviour of complex nonlinear flows by decomposing the flow into modes determined from spectral analysis of the Koopman operator, an infinite-dimensional linear operator associated with the full nonlinear system. These modes, referred to as Koopman modes, are associated with a particular observable, and may be determined directly from data (either numerical or experimental) using a variant of a standard Arnoldi method. They have an associated temporal frequency and growth rate and may be viewed as a nonlinear generalization of global eigenmodes of a linearized system. They provide an alternative to proper orthogonal decomposition, and in the case of periodic data the Koopman modes reduce to a discrete temporal Fourier transform. The Arnoldi method used for computations is identical to the dynamic mode decomposition recently proposed by Schmid & Sesterhenn (Sixty-First Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics, 2008), so dynamic mode decomposition can be thought of as an algorithm for finding Koopman modes. We illustrate the method on an example of a jet in crossflow, and show that the method captures the dominant frequencies and elucidates the associated spatial structures.

In this paper we discuss two issues related to model reduction of deterministic or stochastic processes. The first is the relationship of the spectral properties of the dynamics on the attractor of the original, high-dimensional dynamical system with the properties and possibilities for model reduction. We review some elements of the spectral theory of dynamical systems. We apply this theory to obtain a decomposition of the process that utilizes spectral properties of the linear Koopman operator associated with the asymptotic dynamics on the attractor. This allows us to extract the almost periodic part of the evolving process. The remainder of the process has continuous spectrum. The second topic we discuss is that of model validation, where the original, possibly high-dimensional dynamics and the dynamics of the reduced model -that can be deterministic or stochastic -are compared in some norm. Using the "statistical Takens theorem" proven in (Mezić, I. and Banaszuk, A. Physica D, 2004) we argue that comparison of average energy contained in the finite-dimensional projection is one in the hierarchy of functionals of the field that need to be checked in order to assess the accuracy of the projection.

A majority of methods from dynamical system analysis, especially those in applied settings, rely on Poincaré's geometric picture that focuses on "dynamics of states." While this picture has fueled our field for a century, it has shown difficulties in handling high-dimensional, ill-described, and uncertain systems, which are more and more common in engineered systems design and analysis of "big data" measurements. This overview article presents an alternative framework for dynamical systems, based on the "dynamics of observables" picture. The central object is the Koopman operator: an infinite-dimensional, linear operator that is nonetheless capable of capturing the full nonlinear dynamics. The first goal of this paper is to make it clear how methods that appeared in different papers and contexts all relate to each other through spectral properties of the Koopman operator. The second goal is to present these methods in a concise manner in an effort to make the framework accessible to researchers who would like to apply them, but also, expand and improve them. Finally, we aim to provide a road map through the literature where each of the topics was described in detail. We describe three main concepts: Koopman mode analysis, Koopman eigenquotients, and continuous indicators of ergodicity. For each concept, we provide a summary of theoretical concepts required to define and study them, numerical methods that have been developed for their analysis, and, when possible, applications that made use of them. The Koopman framework is showing potential for crossing over from academic and theoretical use to industrial practice. Therefore, the paper highlights its strengths in applied and numerical contexts. Additionally, we point out areas where an additional research push is needed before the approach is adopted as an off-the-shelf framework for analysis and design.

This article reviews theory and applications of Koopman modes in fluid mechanics. Koopman mode decomposition is based on the surprising fact, discovered in Mezić (2005), that normal modes of linear oscillations have their natural analogs-Koopman modes-in the context of nonlinear dynamics. To pursue this analogy, one must change the representation of the system from the state-space representation to the dynamics governed by the linear Koopman operator on an infinite-dimensional space of observables. Whereas Koopman in his original paper dealt only with measure-preserving transformations, the discussion here is predominantly on dissipative systems arising from Navier-Stokes evolution. The analysis is based on spectral properties of the Koopman operator. Aspects of point and continuous parts of the spectrum are discussed. The point spectrum corresponds to isolated frequencies of oscillation present in the fluid flow, and also to growth rates of stable and unstable modes. The continuous part of the spectrum corresponds to chaotic motion on the attractor. A method of computation of the spectrum and the associated Koopman modes is discussed in terms of generalized Laplace analysis. When applied to a generic observable, this method uncovers the full point spectrum. A computational alternative is given by Arnoldi-type methods, leading to so-called dynamic mode decomposition, and I discuss the connection and differences between these two methods. A number of applications are reviewed in which decompositions of this type have been pursued. Koopman mode theory unifies and provides a rigorous background for a number of different concepts that have been advanced in fluid mechanics, including global mode analysis, triple decomposition, and dynamic mode decomposition.

This paper presents a class of linear predictors for nonlinear controlled dynamical systems. The basic idea is to lift (or embed) the nonlinear dynamics into a higher dimensional space where its evolution is approximately linear. In an uncontrolled setting, this procedure amounts to numerical approximations of the Koopman operator associated to the nonlinear dynamics. In this work, we extend the Koopman operator to controlled dynamical systems and apply the Extended Dynamic Mode Decomposition (EDMD) to compute a finite-dimensional approximation of the operator in such a way that this approximation has the form of a linear controlled dynamical system. In numerical examples, the linear predictors obtained in this way exhibit a performance superior to existing linear predictors such as those based on local linearization or the so called Carleman linearization. Importantly, the procedure to construct these linear predictors is completely data-driven and extremely simple -it boils down to a nonlinear transformation of the data (the lifting) and a linear least squares problem in the lifted space that can be readily solved for large data sets. These linear predictors can be readily used to design controllers for the nonlinear dynamical system using linear controller design methodologies. We focus in particular on model predictive control (MPC) and show that MPC controllers designed in this way enjoy computational complexity of the underlying optimization problem comparable to that of MPC for a linear dynamical system with the same number of control inputs and the same dimension of the state-space. Importantly, linear inequality constraints on the state and control inputs as well as nonlinear constraints on the state can be imposed in a linear fashion in the proposed MPC scheme. Similarly, cost functions nonlinear in the state variable can be handled in a linear fashion. We treat both the full-state measurement case and the input-output case, as well as systems with disturbances / noise. Numerical examples (including a high-dimensional nonlinear PDE control) demonstrate the approach with the source code available online 2 .

We establish the convergence of a class of numerical algorithms, known as Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DMD), for computation of the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the infinitedimensional Koopman operator. The algorithms act on data coming from observables on a state space, arranged in Hankel-type matrices. The proofs utilize the assumption that the underlying dynamical system is ergodic. This includes the classical measure-preserving systems, as well as systems whose attractors support a physical measure. Our approach relies on the observation that vector projections in DMD can be used to approximate the function projections by the virtue of Birkhoff's ergodic theorem. Using this fact, we show that applying DMD to Hankel data matrices in the limit of infinite-time observations yields the true Koopman eigenfunctions and eigenvalues. We also show that the Singular Value Decomposition, which is the central part of most DMD algorithms, converges to the Proper Orthogonal Decomposition of observables. We use this result to obtain a representation of the dynamics of systems with continuous spectrum based on the lifting of the coordinates to the space of observables. The numerical application of these methods is demonstrated using well-known dynamical systems and examples from computational fluid dynamics.

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