title: Introduction to Focus Issue: Lagrangian Coherent Structures.
abstract: The topic of Lagrangian coherent structures (LCS) has been a rapidly growing area of research in nonlinear dynamics for almost a decade. It provides a means to rigorously define and detect transport barriers in dynamical systems with arbitrary time dependence and has a wealth of applications, particularly to fluid flow problems. Here, we give a short introduction to the topic of LCS and review the new work presented in this Focus Issue.
authors.affiliation: Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Peacock
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Dabiri
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001703:Biophysics / Q000379:methods; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010825:Physics / Q000379:methods*; D013997:Time Factors