Related papers: Growing pseudo-eigenmodes and positive logarithmic…
We develop a new scaling theory for the resistive tearing mode instability of a current sheet with a strong shear flow across the layer. The growth rate decreases with increasing flow shear and is completely stabilized as the shear flow…
We study the linear stability of a class of monotone shear flows. When the associated Rayleigh operator possesses a neutral embedded eigenvalue, we show that solutions of the linearized system may exhibit arbitrarily large growth in both…
The most efficient energy sources known in the Universe are accretion disks. Those around black holes convert 5 -- 40 per cent of rest-mass energy to radiation. Like water circling a drain, inflowing mass must lose angular momentum,…
At the interface between two fluid layers in relative motion, infinitesimal fluctuations can be exponentially amplified, inducing vorticity and the breakdown of the laminar flow. This process, known as the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, is…
Origin of turbulence in cold accretion disks, particularly in 3D, which is expected to be hydrodynamic but not magnetohydrodynamic, is a big puzzle. While the flow must exhibit some turbulence in support of the transfer of mass inward and…
The flow of an electrically conducting fluid in a thin disc under the action of an azimuthal Lorentz force is studied experimentally. At small forcing, the Lorentz force is balanced by either viscosity or inertia, yielding quasi-Keplerian…
A theoretical and experimental study of the spin-over mode induced by the elliptical instability of a flow contained in a slightly deformed rotating spherical shell is presented. This geometrical configuration mimics the liquid rotating…
We carry out a general study of the stability of astrophysical flows that appear steady in a uniformly rotating frame. Such a flow might correspond to a stellar pulsation mode or an accretion disk with a free global distortion giving it…
We discuss the possibility that astrophysical accretion disks are dynamically unstable to non-axisymmetric disturbances with characteristic scales much smaller than the vertical scale height. The instability is studied using three methods:…
Experiments in a modified Taylor-Couette device, spanning Reynolds numbers of $10^5$ to greater than $10^6$, reveal the nonlinear stability of astrophysically-relevant flows. Nearly ideal rotation, expected in the absence of axial…
The instability of flows via two-dimensional perturbations is analyzed theoretically and numerically in a nonmodal framework. The analysis is based on results obtained in [Verschaeve et al. (2018)] showing the inviscid character of the…
We explore the linear stability of astrophysical discs exhibiting vertical shear, which arises when there is a radial variation in the temperature or entropy. Such discs are subject to a "vertical-shear instability", which recent nonlinear…
The Vertical Shear Instability is one of two known mechanisms potentially active in the so-called dead zones of protoplanetary accretion disks. A recent analysis indicates that a subset of unstable modes shows unbounded growth - both as…
To understand the self-sustenance of subcritical turbulence in spectrally stable shear flows, we performed direct numerical simulations of homogeneous shear turbulence for different aspect ratios of the flow domain and analyzed the…
Discs with a rotation profile depending on radius and height are subject to an axisymmetric linear instability, the vertical shear instability. Here we show that non-axisymmetric perturbations, while eventually stabilized, can sustain huge…
Eccentric Keplerian discs are believed to be unstable to three-dimensional hydrodynamical instabilities driven by the time-dependence of fluid properties around an orbit. These instabilities could lead to small-scale turbulence, and…
In linearly stable shear flows turbulence spontaneously decays with a characteristic lifetime that varies with Reynolds number. The lifetime sharply increases with Reynolds number so that a possible divergence marking the transition to…
In this work we numerically demonstrate both significant transient (i.e. non-modal) linear amplification and sustained nonlinear turbulence in a kinetic plasma system with no unstable eigenmodes. The particular system considered is an…
We describe ideal incompressible hydrodynamics on the hyperbolic plane which is an infinite surface of constant negative curvature. We derive equations of motion, general symmetries and conservation laws, and then consider turbulence with…
We theoretically and experimentally investigate spontaneous self-organization in a conservative (Hamiltonian) turbulent wave system, operating far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Our system is governed by two coherently coupled nonlinear…