|
Abstract |
In this talk I revisit Stokes drift in shallow water from a geometric perspective inspired by conformal field theory. Given a fluid on a circular pool supporting periodic waves, I argue that the displacement of fluid particles after one period involves a Berry phase associated with adiabatic conformal transformations. In particular, the phase shift produced by cnoidal waves can be evaluated in closed form, and may be accessible to experiments or numerical simulations. Conceptually, this relates fluid dynamics, symplectic geometry, conformal field theory and Thomas precession. |
