Un opérateur de diffusion spatialement sélectif pour le transport d'un traceur passif ou actif par un écoulement de grande échelle

In a fluid flow, fields are measurable up to a cut-off scale at which they are regularized. We show that, for a smooth velocity field, this regularization adds to the advection equation a diffusive term proportional to the strain tensor. We study in two dimensions its effect on the dynamics of velocity and vorticity, and on the conservation of quadratic invariants. Vorticity and energy are still conserved, while enstrophy and tracer variance are dissipated depending on the flow topology. These properties (conservation, dissipation, spatial selectivity) suggest the use of this selective strain–diffusion operator for numerical simulations of inhomogeneous flows in the quasi-two-dimensional approximation.