Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
Phys Rev Lett. 2013 Aug 23;111(8):084501. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.084501. Epub 2013 Aug 20.
A previously unknown instability creates space-filling lattices of 3D vortices in linearly stable, rotating, stratified shear flows. The instability starts from an easily excited critical layer. The layer intensifies by drawing energy from the background shear and rolls up into vortices that excite new critical layers and vortices. The vortices self-similarly replicate to create lattices of turbulent vortices. The vortices persist for all time. This self-replication occurs in stratified Couette flows and in the dead zones of protoplanetary disks where it can destabilize Keplerian flows.
一种先前未知的不稳定性在线性稳定、旋转、分层剪切流中产生了充满空间的三维涡旋点阵。这种不稳定性始于一个很容易被激发的临界层。该层通过从背景剪切中汲取能量来加强，并卷起成涡旋，这些涡旋会激发新的临界层和涡旋。这些涡旋以自相似的方式复制，形成了湍流涡旋的点阵。这些涡旋会一直存在。这种自复制发生在分层库埃特流和原行星盘中的死区内，在那里它可以使开普勒流失稳。
