Enhanced separation of diffusing particles by chaotic advection

Combining the reversibility of advection by a Stokes flow with the irreversibility of diffusion leads to a separation strategy for diffusing substances. This basic idea goes back to Taylor and Heller. It is shown here that the sensitivity of the method can be greatly enhanced by making the advection chaotic. The separation is particularly efficient when the thinnest structures resulting from advection are made comparable in size to a diffusion length. Simple heuristic estimates based on an understanding of chaotic motion and diffusion lead to a certain scaling that is seen in numerical experiments on this separation method.