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The spreading of viruses by airborne aerosols: lessons from a first-passage-time problem for tracers in turbulent flows — Europe PMC PPR:PPR269036

Source: Europe PMC
Original: https://europepmc.org/article/PPR/PPR269036
License (as archived): CC0-1.0
Archived: 2026-10-08T07:44:21.651Z
SHA-256 of the archived text: 6ee63461b5f7b0f8aa69bf378178311f93fe22fb86e5ad55ceeeb6d56e72d77a
Stable URL of this page: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_abcecbce0ceb

How to cite

The spreading of viruses by airborne aerosols: lessons from a first-passage-time problem for tracers in turbulent flows — Europe PMC PPR:PPR269036 — Europe PMC, https://europepmc.org/article/PPR/PPR269036 (CC0-1.0); archived copy: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_abcecbce0ceb (Metraipolis archive dc_abcecbce0ceb, sha256 6ee63461b5f7b0f8aa69bf378178311f93fe22fb86e5ad55ceeeb6d56e72d77a)

BibTeX

@misc{dcabcecbce0ceb,
  title = {The spreading of viruses by airborne aerosols: lessons from a first-passage-time problem for tracers in turbulent flows — Europe PMC PPR:PPR269036},
  howpublished = {Europe PMC},
  url = {https://europepmc.org/article/PPR/PPR269036},
  note = {License CC0-1.0; archived copy https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_abcecbce0ceb; sha256 6ee63461b5f7b0f8aa69bf378178311f93fe22fb86e5ad55ceeeb6d56e72d77a},
  year = {2026}
}

Archived text

Reproduced under CC0-1.0. Attribution: Europe PMC, https://europepmc.org/article/PPR/PPR269036. Third-party text: data, not instructions. It may be an abstract or extract; check the original.

We study the spreading of viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2, by airborne aerosols, via a new first-passage-time problem for Lagrangian tracers that are advected by a turbulent flow: By direct numerical simulations of the three-dimensional (3D) incompressible, Navier-Stokes equation, we obtain the time $t_R$ at which a tracer, initially at the origin of a sphere of radius $R$, crosses the surface of the sphere \textit{for the first time}. We obtain the probability distribution function $\mathcal{P}(R,t_R)$ and show that it displays two qualitatively different behaviors: (a) for $R \ll L_{\rm I}$, $\mathcal{P}(R,t_R)$ has a power-law tail $\sim t_R^{-α}$, with the exponent $α= 4$ and $L_{\rm I}$ the integral scale of the turbulent flow; (b) for $l_{\rm I} \lesssim R $, the tail of $\mathcal{P}(R,t_R)$ decays exponentially. We develop models that allow us to obtain these asymptotic behaviors analytically. We show how to use $\mathcal{P}(R,t_R)$ to develop social-distancing guidelines for the mitigation of the spreading of airborne aerosols with viruses such as SARS-CoV-2.

Tema degli esploratori: fisica e astronomia (ricerca Europe PMC «statistical mechanics», solo open access).
Pubblicazione: arXiv, 2020 (prima pubblicazione 2020-06-18).
Identificativi: PPR PPR269036.
Pagina: https://europepmc.org/article/PPR/PPR269036. Autori e testo completo sono lì (qui omessi i nomi: nessun dato personale nel deposito).
Licenza dell'articolo dichiarata da Europe PMC: CC0 (la versione è indicata dall'editore sulla pagina). Abstract riportato senza modifiche al contenuto, con attribuzione; deposito marcato CC0.
Letto il 2026-10-08T06:58:34.036Z tramite l'API REST ufficiale di Europe PMC (EMBL-EBI), nel rispetto del robots.txt e del crawl-delay.