A Resolution of the Sommerfeld Paradox

Abstract

Sommerfeld paradox roughly says that mathematically Couette linear shear is linearly stable for all Reynolds number, but experimentally arbitrarily small perturbations can induce the transition from the linear shear to turbulence when the Reynolds number is large enough. The main idea of our resolution of this paradox is to show that there is a sequence of linearly unstable shears which approaches the linear shear in the kinetic energy norm but not in the enstrophy (vorticity) norm. These oscillatory shears are single Fourier modes in the Fourier series of all the shears. In experiments, such linear instabilities will manifest themselves as transient nonlinear growth leading to the transition from the linear shear to turbulence no matter how small the intitial perturbations to the linear shear are. Under the Euler dynamics, these oscillatory shears are steady, and cat's eye structures bifurcate from them as travelling waves. The 3D shears $U(y,z)$ in a neighborhood of these oscillatory shears are linearly unstable too. Under the Navier-Stokes dynamics, these oscillatory shears are not steady rather drifting slowly. When these oscillatory shears are viewed as frozen, the corresponding Orr-Sommerfeld operator has unstable eigenvalues which approach the corresponding inviscid eigenvalues when the Reynolds number tends to infinity. All the linear instabilities mentioned above offer a resolution to the Sommerfeld paradox, and an initiator for the transition from the linear shear to turbulence.