@article{9297, abstract = {We report the results of an experimental investigation into the decay of turbulence in plane Couette–Poiseuille flow using ‘quench’ experiments where the flow laminarises after a sudden reduction in Reynolds number Re. Specifically, we study the velocity field in the streamwise–spanwise plane. We show that the spanwise velocity containing rolls decays faster than the streamwise velocity, which displays elongated regions of higher or lower velocity called streaks. At final Reynolds numbers above 425, the decay of streaks displays two stages: first a slow decay when rolls are present and secondly a more rapid decay of streaks alone. The difference in behaviour results from the regeneration of streaks by rolls, called the lift-up effect. We define the turbulent fraction as the portion of the flow containing turbulence and this is estimated by thresholding the spanwise velocity component. It decreases linearly with time in the whole range of final Re. The corresponding decay slope increases linearly with final Re. The extrapolated value at which this decay slope vanishes is Reaz≈656±10, close to Reg≈670 at which turbulence is self-sustained. The decay of the energy computed from the spanwise velocity component is found to be exponential. The corresponding decay rate increases linearly with Re, with an extrapolated vanishing value at ReAz≈688±10. This value is also close to the value at which the turbulence is self-sustained, showing that valuable information on the transition can be obtained over a wide range of Re.}, author = {Liu, T. and Semin, B. and Klotz, Lukasz and Godoy-Diana, R. and Wesfreid, J. E. and Mullin, T.}, issn = {1469-7645}, journal = {Journal of Fluid Mechanics}, publisher = {Cambridge University Press}, title = {{Decay of streaks and rolls in plane Couette-Poiseuille flow}}, doi = {10.1017/jfm.2021.89}, volume = {915}, year = {2021}, } @article{9407, abstract = {High impact epidemics constitute one of the largest threats humanity is facing in the 21st century. In the absence of pharmaceutical interventions, physical distancing together with testing, contact tracing and quarantining are crucial in slowing down epidemic dynamics. Yet, here we show that if testing capacities are limited, containment may fail dramatically because such combined countermeasures drastically change the rules of the epidemic transition: Instead of continuous, the response to countermeasures becomes discontinuous. Rather than following the conventional exponential growth, the outbreak that is initially strongly suppressed eventually accelerates and scales faster than exponential during an explosive growth period. As a consequence, containment measures either suffice to stop the outbreak at low total case numbers or fail catastrophically if marginally too weak, thus implying large uncertainties in reliably estimating overall epidemic dynamics, both during initial phases and during second wave scenarios.}, author = {Scarselli, Davide and Budanur, Nazmi B and Timme, Marc and Hof, Björn}, issn = {20411723}, journal = {Nature Communications}, number = {1}, publisher = {Springer Nature}, title = {{Discontinuous epidemic transition due to limited testing}}, doi = {10.1038/s41467-021-22725-9}, volume = {12}, year = {2021}, } @article{9467, abstract = {Turbulence in the flow of fluid through a pipe can be suppressed by buoyancy forces. As the suppression of turbulence leads to severe heat transfer deterioration, this is an important and undesirable phenomenon in both heating and cooling applications. Vertical flow is often considered, as the axial buoyancy force can help drive the flow. With heating measured by the buoyancy parameter 𝐶, our direct numerical simulations show that shear-driven turbulence may either be completely laminarised or it transitions to a relatively quiescent convection-driven state. Buoyancy forces cause a flattening of the base flow profile, which in isothermal pipe flow has recently been linked to complete suppression of turbulence (Kühnen et al., Nat. Phys., vol. 14, 2018, pp. 386–390), and the flattened laminar base profile has enhanced nonlinear stability (Marensi et al., J. Fluid Mech., vol. 863, 2019, pp. 50–875). In agreement with these findings, the nonlinear lower-branch travelling-wave solution analysed here, which is believed to mediate transition to turbulence in isothermal pipe flow, is shown to be suppressed by buoyancy. A linear instability of the laminar base flow is responsible for the appearance of the relatively quiescent convection driven state for 𝐶≳4 across the range of Reynolds numbers considered. In the suppression of turbulence, however, i.e. in the transition from turbulence, we find clearer association with the analysis of He et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 809, 2016, pp. 31–71) than with the above dynamical systems approach, which describes better the transition to turbulence. The laminarisation criterion He et al. propose, based on an apparent Reynolds number of the flow as measured by its driving pressure gradient, is found to capture the critical 𝐶=𝐶𝑐𝑟(𝑅𝑒) above which the flow will be laminarised or switch to the convection-driven type. Our analysis suggests that it is the weakened rolls, rather than the streaks, which appear to be critical for laminarisation.}, author = {Marensi, Elena and He, Shuisheng and Willis, Ashley P.}, issn = {14697645}, journal = {Journal of Fluid Mechanics}, publisher = {Cambridge University Press}, title = {{Suppression of turbulence and travelling waves in a vertical heated pipe}}, doi = {10.1017/jfm.2021.371}, volume = {919}, year = {2021}, } @article{9558, abstract = {We show that turbulent dynamics that arise in simulations of the three-dimensional Navier--Stokes equations in a triply-periodic domain under sinusoidal forcing can be described as transient visits to the neighborhoods of unstable time-periodic solutions. Based on this description, we reduce the original system with more than 10^5 degrees of freedom to a 17-node Markov chain where each node corresponds to the neighborhood of a periodic orbit. The model accurately reproduces long-term averages of the system's observables as weighted sums over the periodic orbits. }, author = {Yalniz, Gökhan and Hof, Björn and Budanur, Nazmi B}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {24}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Coarse graining the state space of a turbulent flow using periodic orbits}}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.244502}, volume = {126}, year = {2021}, } @article{10203, abstract = {Single photon emitters in atomically-thin semiconductors can be deterministically positioned using strain induced by underlying nano-structures. Here, we couple monolayer WSe2 to high-refractive-index gallium phosphide dielectric nano-antennas providing both optical enhancement and monolayer deformation. For single photon emitters formed on such nano-antennas, we find very low (femto-Joule) saturation pulse energies and up to 104 times brighter photoluminescence than in WSe2 placed on low-refractive-index SiO2 pillars. We show that the key to these observations is the increase on average by a factor of 5 of the quantum efficiency of the emitters coupled to the nano-antennas. This further allows us to gain new insights into their photoluminescence dynamics, revealing the roles of the dark exciton reservoir and Auger processes. We also find that the coherence time of such emitters is limited by intrinsic dephasing processes. Our work establishes dielectric nano-antennas as a platform for high-efficiency quantum light generation in monolayer semiconductors.}, author = {Sortino, Luca and Zotev, Panaiot G. and Phillips, Catherine L. and Brash, Alistair J. and Cambiasso, Javier and Marensi, Elena and Fox, A. Mark and Maier, Stefan A. and Sapienza, Riccardo and Tartakovskii, Alexander I.}, issn = {2041-1723}, journal = {Nature Communications}, publisher = {Springer Nature}, title = {{Bright single photon emitters with enhanced quantum efficiency in a two-dimensional semiconductor coupled with dielectric nano-antennas}}, doi = {10.1038/s41467-021-26262-3}, volume = {12}, year = {2021}, }