Transition threshold for the 3D Couette flow in a finite channel

TL;DR

This paper establishes a critical initial disturbance size proportional to Re^{-1} that guarantees the nonlinear stability of 3D Couette flow at high Reynolds numbers, confirming a long-standing transition threshold conjecture.

Contribution

It proves the transition threshold for 3D Couette flow in a finite channel, showing stability under small perturbations and developing resolvent estimates for the linearized Navier-Stokes system.

Findings

Flow remains stable for initial disturbances below c_0 Re^{-1}.

Solutions converge rapidly to streak solutions for large Re.

Confirms the transition threshold conjecture by Trefethen et al.

Abstract

In this paper, we study nonlinear stability of the 3D plane Couette flow $(y,0,0)$ at high Reynolds number ${Re}$ in a finite channel $\mathbb{T}\times [-1,1]\times \mathbb{T}$. It is well known that the plane Couette flow is linearly stable for any Reynolds number. However, it could become nonlinearly unstable and transition to turbulence for small but finite perturbations at high Reynolds number. This is so-called Sommerfeld paradox. One resolution of this paradox is to study the transition threshold problem, which is concerned with how much disturbance will lead to the instability of the flow and the dependence of disturbance on the Reynolds number. This work shows that if the initial velocity $v_0$ satisfies $\|v_0-(y,0,0)\|_{H^2}\le c_0{Re}^{-1}$ for some $c_0>0$ independent of $Re$, then the solution of the 3D Navier-Stokes equations is global in time and does not transition away from the Couette flow in the $L^\infty$ sense, and rapidly converges to a streak solution for $t\gg Re^{\frac 13}$ due to the mixing-enhanced dissipation effect. This result confirms the transition threshold conjecture proposed by Trefethen et al.(Science, 261(1993), 578-584). To this end, we develop the resolvent estimate method to establish the space-time estimates for the full linearized Navier-Stokes system around the flow $(V(t,y,z), 0,0)$, where $V(t,y,z)$ is a small perturbation(but independent of $Re$) of the Couette flow $y$.