Hydrodynamic Doppler effect in flowing soap films

Abstract

It is known for many years that the vorticity and the thickness fields in soap films are coupled and that the thickness wave propagates at the Marangoni wave speed. Based on the two observations, we propose a hypothesis that the vorticity field propagates at the Marangoni wave speed in flowing soap film channels. Using the hypothesis, we modify the point vortex model and find that the periodic array of vortices will have an expanded periodicity in the longitudinal direction, similar to the redshift of the Doppler effect. The theoretical prediction is compared with the experiments and we find that the hydrodynamic Doppler effect is present in soap film flows.