Receptivity and Biorthogonal Decomposition in a Reacting Temporal Mixing Layer

Abstract

We examine receptivity and biorthogonal decomposition in a reacting temporal mixing layer using direct and adjoint eigenmodes of a finite-thickness compressible linearized operator built from the mean reacting base state. The analysis focuses on the Kelvin--Helmholtz branch and asks how the reacting base state modifies the selected temporal instability, where localized forcing most efficiently excites it, and how strongly the associated modal family is represented in time-resolved planar simulation data. Receptivity maps are constructed for mass, momentum, thermal, and mixture-fraction forcing channels using an energy-weighted adjoint projection, with biorthogonality enforced by the corresponding direct--adjoint inner product. A complementary biorthogonal decomposition provides modal amplitudes and cumulative few-mode reconstructions at the fundamental streamwise wavenumber. The finite-thickness branch is interpreted against a compressible vortex-sheet reference built from the outer-stream states. The reacting layer supports an unstable finite-thickness Kelvin--Helmholtz family over low-to-moderate wavenumbers even though the discontinuous reference is essentially neutral. Mass forcing leads the raw localized receptivity maps, mixture-fraction forcing follows through composition-pressure coupling, and chemistry-weighted thermal forcing identifies the strongest thermochemical support of the same family. The results show how distributed reacting thermodynamics reorganize compressible shear-layer instability and how that reorganized branch remains embedded in the nonlinear flow.