Localized edge states in plane Couette flow

Abstract

The dynamics at the threshold of transition in plane Couette flow is investigated numerically in a large spatial domain for a certain type of localized initial perturbation, for Re between 350 and 1000. The corresponding edge state is an unsteady spotlike structure, localized in both streamwise and spanwise directions, which neither grows nor decays in size. We show that the localized nature of the edge state is numerically robust, and is not influenced by the size of the computational domain. The edge trajectory appears to transiently visit localized steady states. This suggests that basic spatiotemporally intermittent features of transition to turbulence, such as the growth of a turbulent spot, can be described as a dynamical system.