Complex spectral properties of non-Hermitian operators: An application to open-flow mixing systems

We study the spectral properties of the advection-diffusion operator associated with a non-chaotic 3d Stokes flow defined in the annular region between counter-rotating cylinders of finite length. The focus is on the dependence of the eigenvalue-eigenfunction spectrum on the Peclet number Pe. Several convection-enhanced mixing regimes are identified, each characterized by a power law scaling, -µd~Pe-¿ (¿