Stability of viscous three-dimensional stratified Couette flow via dispersion and mixing

Abstract

This article explores the stability of stratified Couette flow in the viscous $3d$ Boussinesq equations. In this system, mixing effects arise from the shearing background, and gravity acts as a restoring force leading to dispersive internal gravity waves. These mechanisms are of fundamentally different nature and relevant in complementary dynamical regimes. Our study combines them to establish a bound for the nonlinear transition threshold, which is quantitatively larger than the inverse Reynolds number $\nu$, and increases with stronger stratification resp. gravity.