Maximal mixing by incompressible fluid flows

Abstract: We consider a model for mixing binary viscous fluids under an incompressible flow. We proof the impossibility of perfect mixing in finite time for flows with finite viscous dissipation. As measures of mixedness we consider a Monge--Kantorovich--Rubinstein transportation distance and, more classically, the $H^{-1}$ norm. We derive rigorous a priori lower bounds on these mixing norms which show that mixing cannot proceed faster than exponentially in time. The rate of the exponential decay is uniform in the initial data.