Lulabel Ruiz Seitz
Ph.D. Candidate in Applied Mathematics, Brown University
Ph.D. Candidate in Applied Mathematics, Brown University
About
I'm a Ph.D. candidate in the Division of Applied Mathematics at Brown University (entered 2022, defending 2027).
My work focuses on multiscale asymptotics and wave-mean decomposition for problems in geophysical fluid dynamics, in settings ranging from the generation of surface waves in the ocean to turbulence closure models.
I'm an NDSEG fellow and was a Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 2024.
In 2022, I graduated from Stanford University with a B.S. honors in mathematics, where I was a first-generation college student.
Recent Work
See the paper here: Journal of Fluid Mechanics
It is well known that wind blowing over the ocean creates waves, thereby transferring momentum into the ocean. But if there is a pre-existing wave, does that affect the rate of air-sea momentum transfer? Does the initial perturbation to the flat sea state that eventually becomes a bona fide wave affect its own response to the wind? A nonlinear stability analysis in the Lagrangian frame, extending Miles' (1957) classical theory of wind-wave generation, answers these questions. By explicitly accounting for the actual velocity experienced by a particle (the Lagrangian drift), the analysis predicts a significant suppression of wave growth with increasing wave steepness, providing a new explanation for prior experimental results showing this trend.
An explanation is also on this webpage I made to present this work at the Division of Fluid Dynamics.
See the paper here: Journal of Fluid Mechanics
The LANS-α equations have been used successfully as a turbulence closure model in many contexts, including in atmosphere and ocean models. The mathematical roots of these equations can be traced back to Jean Leray's 1934 work, regularizing the nonlinear term in Navier-Stokes to prove the existence of weak solutions. The LANS-α equations are thus fundamentally different from other turbulence closure models, as they modify the nonlinear term rather than the dissipation. However, there have been numerical stability issues in some implementations of the system, with the kinetic energy growing without bound. This work analyzes the energy in the framework of a fast singular limit, which also provides leading-order inertia-gravity wave interactions.
An alternative view of averaging for wave-mean decomposition (preprint coming very soon)
A distinct instability emerges from a wave-averaged baroclinic background (preprint coming soon)
Header image credits: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56357179
Background image: from a turbulence simulation I was running!