Chemical and biological activity in three-dimensional flows

We study the dynamics of active particles advected by three-dimensional (3D) open incompressible flows, both analytically and numerically. We find that 3D reactive flows have fundamentally different dynamical features from those in 2D systems. In particular, we show that the reaction's productivity per reaction step can be enhanced, with respect to the 2D case, while the productivity per unit time in some 3D flows goes to zero in the limit of high mixing rates, in contrast to the 2D behavior, in which the productivity goes to a finite constant. These theoretical predictions are validated by numerical simulations on a generic map model.