Bifurcations to Local and Global Modes in Spatially Developing Flows

Abstract

We outline a possible scenario of successive bifurcations to local and global modes on a Ginzburg-Landau model with varying coefficients. It is shown that self-sustained resonances may appear via a Hopf bifurcation when the system exhibits a region of local absolute instability which is sufficiently large. Our findings are in qualitative agreement with experimental observations of spatially developing flows such as wakes and inhomogeneous jets.