Enhancing and controlling chaotic advection or chaotic mixing within liquid droplets is crucial for a variety of applications including digital microfluidic devices which use microscopic ``discrete fluid volumes (droplets) as microreactors. In this w
ork, we consider the Stokes flow of a translating spherical liquid droplet which we perturb by imposing a time-periodic rigid-body rotation. Using the tools of dynamical systems, we have shown in previous work that the rotation not only leads to one or more three-dimensional chaotic mixing regions, in which mixing occurs through the stretching and folding of material lines, but also offers the possibility of controlling both the size and the location of chaotic mixing within the drop. Such a control was achieved through appropriate tuning of the amplitude and frequency of the rotation in order to use resonances between the natural frequencies of the system and those of the external forcing. In this paper, we study the influence of the orientation of the rotation axis on the chaotic mixing zones as a third parameter, as well as propose an experimental set up to implement the techniques discussed.
The uncorrelated (``sequential) and correlated (``nonsequential) double ionization of the H2 molecule in strong laser pulses is investigated using the tools of nonlinear dynamics. We focus on the phase-space dynamics of this system, specifically by f
inding the dynamical structures that regulate these ionization processes. The emerging picture complements the recollision scenario by clarifying the distinct roles played by the recolliding and core electrons. Our analysis leads to verifiable predictions of the intensities where qualitative changes in ionization occur. We also show how these findings depend on the internuclear distance.
Both uncorrelated (sequential) and correlated (nonsequential) processes contribute to the double ionization of the helium atom in strong laser pulses. The double ionization probability has a characteristic knee shape as a function of the intensity of
the pulse. We investigate the phase-space dynamics of this system, specifically by finding the dynamical structures that regulate the ionization processes. The emerging picture complements the recollision scenario by clarifying the distinct roles played by the recolliding and core electrons. Our analysis leads to verifiable predictions of the intensities where qualitiative changes in ionization occur, leading to the hallmark knee shape.
