Liquid Surface Wave Band Structure Instabilities

Abstract

We study interfacial instabilities between two spatially periodically sheared ideal fluids. Bloch wavefunction decompositions of the surface deformation and fluid velocities result in a nonhermitian secular matrix with an associated band structure that yields both linear oscillating and nonoscillating instabilities, enhanced near Bragg planes corresponding to the periodicity determined by converging or diverging surface flows. The instabilities persist even when the dynamical effects of the upper fluid are neglected, in contrast to the uniform shear Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instability. Periodic flows can also couple with uniform shear and suppress standard KH instabilities.