Rama Govindarajan: Caustics and raindrops

Rama Govindarajan, International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bengaluru

In a turbulent particle-laden or droplet-laden flow, caustics, or regions where particle trajectories converge, are responsible for many processes like the formation of raindrops and the rapid transportation of marine snow to the deep ocean. After examining caustics formation in model flows and in 2D turbulence, we will move on to a different mechanism for raindrop growth: by condensation, and see how this makes cloud turbulence different from `normal' turbulence.