4.1 Flow dynamics

The flows studied are of oscillatory nature, with oscillations typically replicating the dynamics found on the periodic orbit PO5. To illustrate the flow dynamics, we consider a localized periodic orbit with pattern wavelength $l_{z}\approx 6.7$ taken from PO5 at $Re=200.41072$ and shown in figure 4. To characterize it, we use the streamwise-averaged and wall-normal-averaged kinetic energy:

(4.1) $$\begin{eqnarray}E_{xy}(z)=\frac{1}{2}\int _{0}^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{x}}\int _{-\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{y}/2}^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{y}/2}|\boldsymbol{u}|^{2}\,\text{d}x\,\text{d}y.\end{eqnarray}$$

Figure 4(a) shows typical oscillations described by the flow, dominated by streaks whose amplitude oscillates in time while a nucleation event starts but never reaches completion. For the parameter values used, the oscillations have period $T\approx 189$ . The period of oscillation is a function of the Reynolds number, but the description below remains qualitatively accurate for most of the values of the Reynolds number studied. To gain more insight, we decompose the flow field in Fourier series in the streamwise direction (Wang, Gibson & Waleffe Reference Wang, Gibson and Waleffe2007):

(4.2) $$\begin{eqnarray}\boldsymbol{u}=\mathop{\sum }_{k=0}^{\infty }\boldsymbol{u}_{k}(y,z)\text{e}^{\text{i}\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}kx}+\text{c.c.},\end{eqnarray}$$

where $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}=2\unicode[STIX]{x03C0}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{x}$ , $k$ is a positive integer and $\text{c.c.}$ stands for the complex conjugate expression. This decomposition allows the introduction of the following quantities:

(4.3a ) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle E_{u} & = & \displaystyle \frac{1}{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{y}l_{z}}\int _{-\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{y}/2}^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{y}/2}\int _{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{z}/2}^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{z}/2+l_{z}}u_{0}(y,z)^{2}\,\text{d}y\,\text{d}z,\end{eqnarray}$$

(4.3b ) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \widetilde{E}_{u} & = & \displaystyle \frac{1}{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{y}l_{z}}\int _{-\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{y}/2}^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{y}/2}\int _{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{z}/2}^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{z}/2+l_{z}}u_{1}(y,z)^{2}\,\text{d}y\,\text{d}z,\end{eqnarray}$$

(4.3c ) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle E_{v} & = & \displaystyle \frac{1}{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{y}l_{z}}\int _{-\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{y}/2}^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{y}/2}\int _{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{z}/2}^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{z}/2+l_{z}}\left[v_{0}(y,z)^{2}+w_{0}(y,z)^{2}\right]\,\text{d}y\,\text{d}z,\end{eqnarray}$$

(4.3d ) $$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \widetilde{E}_{v} & = & \displaystyle \frac{1}{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{y}l_{z}}\int _{-\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{y}/2}^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{y}/2}\int _{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{z}/2}^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{z}/2+l_{z}}\left[v_{1}(y,z)^{2}+w_{1}(y,z)^{2}\right],\end{eqnarray}$$

Figure 5.

Correlations between $E_{u}$ , $\widetilde{E}_{u}$ , $E_{v}$ and $\widetilde{E}_{v}$ . The labelled circles and squares correspond to special points discussed in the text. The phase at these points is indicated in figure 4 using vertical dashed lines of the corresponding colour.

where we have integrated over one spanwise wavelength located in the centre of the localized structure to minimize the influence of the fronts. These quantities relate to the internal dynamics of the state: $E_{u}$ is associated with the streak kinetic energy, $E_{v}$ with that of the rolls while $\widetilde{E}_{u}$ and $\widetilde{E}_{v}$ are associated with those of the streak and roll fluctuations respectively. To unravel dynamical mechanisms, we studied the correlations between $E_{u},\widetilde{E}_{u},E_{v},\widetilde{E}_{v}$ and their time derivatives and report the most useful results in figure 5. The solution displays low-amplitude rolls at $t\approx 120$ in figure 4 corresponding to the point $S_{-}^{+}$ in figure 5. For roll energies $E_{v}\lessapprox 3.63$ , the growth rate of the streaks $\text{d}E_{u}/\text{d}t$ is positively correlated with the roll energy and positive, leading to streak growth (figure 5 a). The growth of the streaks leads to the growth of the streak fluctuations, approximately $6$ time units later, as indicated in figure 5(b). This step is followed, again with a time lag of about $8$ units, by the growth of the roll fluctuations (figure 5 c) and then, $9$ units of time later, by that of the rolls (figure 5 d). This overall growth of the pattern continues beyond the turning point $T_{+}^{-}$ at $E_{v}\approx 3.63$ , where the roll energy and the streak growth become anti-correlated. The shift in dynamics past this turning point is illustrated in figure 4(b). The reciprocal shift, where roll energy and streak growth become positively correlated, occurs at $T_{-}^{+}$ when $E_{v}\approx 4.05$ . When the roll energy reaches $E_{v}\approx 6.61$ , the roll overgrowth leads to the decay of the streaks and, successively, to the delayed decay of the streak fluctuations, roll fluctuations and eventually rolls, as shown by all the positive correlations in figure 5. Before closing the loop, the flow readjusts at low amplitude through an event where the streaks grow and then decay again between $S_{+}^{-}$ and $S_{-}^{+}$ and have a negative correlation with their fluctuations. These cycles orchestrate the dynamics within the localized pattern at most of the Reynolds numbers we investigated and only quantitative changes of the energy thresholds have been noticed, without any impact on the qualitative behaviour analysed in this section.

Figure 6 shows the velocity field along the cycle at $t\approx 300$ as $E_{v}$ reaches its minimum and at $t\approx 410$ as $E_{v}$ reaches its maximum for $Re=200.41072$ , and compares it to the Nagata solutions (lower- and upper-branch states) at a similar value of the parameter. When the rolls are at their weakest during the cycle, the flow closely resembles the lower-branch Nagata solution and as the rolls are at their strongest, the flow looks similar to the upper-branch Nagata solution. As such, this cyclic dynamics can be seen as the signature of a heteroclinic connection between the two Nagata solutions: the manifold connecting the lower to the upper branch is associated with the re-energizing of the streaks by the rolls (together with the delayed growth of the other quantities) and the manifold connecting the upper to the lower branch is associated with the suppression of the streaks due to overgrown rolls.

Figure 6.

Snapshots along the cycle at $t\approx 300$ (a) and $t\approx 410$ (b) for $Re=200.41072$ accompanied by the lower (c) and upper (d) Nagata branch states at $Re\approx 202.3$ .

4.2 Parameter space map

Figure 7 shows the relaminarization time $t_{relam}$ as a function of $Re$ for all our initial conditions. We used a discrete sequence of $Re\in (Re_{s};280]$ whose spacing was manually adjusted and refined in more sensitive regions. Our results unveil a complex scenario with a very clear macroscopic organization in which the size of the initial condition bears more importance than its type, as shown in figure 7 where the initial conditions are sorted by the number of rolls in the localized state, thereby alternating EQ and TW initial conditions. We thus concentrate on EQ only.

Figure 7.

Relaminarization times for EQ initial conditions (blue) and TW initial conditions (light pink) at $Re\in [180;280]$ . The top view of the streamwise velocity of each EQ initial condition is shown on the left. For clarity, each relaminarization time curve has been displaced upwards by 1000 time units compared to the previous one: $t_{relam}\longleftarrow t_{relam}+1000(i-4)$ for initial condition S $i$ . Corresponding profiles for the initial conditions used (S5–S23) are shown on the left, next to the corresponding curve. As a reference, the plateaux observed on all the curves for $Re<240$ correspond to $t_{relam}\sim 400$ .

Figure 7 also highlights the presence of plateaux of nearly constant relaminarization times around $t_{relam}=400$ interspersed with relatively smaller regions of longer-lived transients. The presence of these plateaux and regions does not appear to be a function of the size of the localized initial conditions; however, the location of these regions is a monotonic function of this quantity. At low Reynolds numbers, a series of peaks exists in the vicinity of $Re_{s}$ where the relaminarization time tends to infinity owing to the fact that the initial condition is a fixed point at $Re_{s}$ . We shall denote the corresponding region of accumulating peaks as R1. Increasing in Reynolds numbers, we refer to the next region of increased relaminarization time as R2. The boundaries of R2 move to larger values of the Reynolds number and get closer to each other as the size of the localized pattern decreases and collide between initial conditions S8 and S9. At even higher Reynolds numbers, between $Re\approx 245$ and $Re\approx 252$ , one encounters another region with long-lived transients: R3. This region is not sensitive to the size of the initial condition and only exists for S $i$ , $i\geqslant 8$ . For $Re>280$ , most simulations are long-lasting. We denote this region R4. The plateaux, surrounding two of the above regions and denoted P, are the locations of the shortest relaminarization times. There, the flow does not relaminarize immediately but undergoes oscillations as shown in figure 8. On these plateaux, the localized states typically undergo one or two oscillations before decaying and the wider initial conditions split, giving rise to two spots which, in turn, oscillate before decaying. This splitting event is a crucial phenomenon for regions R2 and R3 and will be discussed in §§ 4.4 and 4.4.2.

Figure 8.

Dynamics observed on the plateaux P and exemplified by the spatiotemporal evolution of the averaged kinetic energy $E_{xy}$ for S5 (a) and S19 (b) time-integrated at $Re=220$ .

The localized initial conditions at the top and bottom of the snaking do not conform to the above general scenario. The smallest initial conditions develop a different kind of behaviour above $Re=240$ . In particular, S4 enters R4 at $Re\approx 250$ whereas S5 exhibits a region of longer transient between $Re=242$ and $Re=261.25$ . The initial condition S6 displays a similar region to S5, albeit of smaller extent. This region is referred to as R3a. The wider initial condition S7 displays little dynamic change for $Re\gtrsim 190$ except for the presence of one peak at $Re\approx 253$ . This peak is a signature of the region R3 which is broader for S8 and reaches its full size for S9. The largest initial condition, S23, does not follow the above picture either as it is a near domain-filling state.

The above observations can be used to provide a schematic of parameter space shown in figure 9. In the next sections, we characterize the various regions identified above.

Figure 9.

Schematic of the parameter space investigated. Regions R1, R2, R3 and R4 are further studied in §§ 4.3 and 4.4 and are interspersed with plateaux P. In most of these cases, an estimate of the typical observed relaminarization time is given. Note the variable scale of the horizontal axis, used for readability.

4.3 Dynamics in the vicinity of the snaking

In the vicinity of the snaking, our initial conditions do not display depinning but rather a well-structured behaviour within region R1 characterized by a series of peaks accumulating at $Re_{s}$ and corresponding to sudden increases of the relaminarization time as a function of $Re$ . As the width of the initial condition increases, this region becomes smaller and the density of peaks increases. As this behaviour is similar for all initial conditions, we focus our attention on the two localized EQ initial conditions displaying the largest R1 regions: S5 and S7.

Figure 10(a) shows an enlargement of R1 for S5 where all but the rightmost peak are represented. Since the initial condition is a (stationary) solution at $Re=Re_{s}(5)$ , the relaminarization time tends to infinity at this value. As we move away from $Re_{s}(5)$ , the relaminarization time decreases but does not do so monotonically. Instead, it undergoes a succession of peaks where the relaminarization time becomes infinite and that accumulates at $Re_{s}(5)$ . The last two peaks of S5 are somewhat different. These peaks, located at $Re\approx 187$ and at $Re\approx 208$ (not shown), display intricate variations and may not lead to infinite time scales due to the more complex dynamics at these higher values of the Reynolds number.

Figure 10.

Enlargements of figure 7 for the region R1 of initial conditions S5 (a) and S7 (b). The circle denotes the local minimum of $t_{relam}$ located in the region between two neighbouring peaks, marked by squares. All peaks shown in (a), except for the one shown in the inset, are associated with infinite relaminarization times but are here represented with $t_{relam}=5000$ for clarity. Note that we excluded the rightmost peak of the region, located at $Re\approx 208$ , for clarity as well. Unlike in (a), the peaks shown in (b) have finite $t_{relam}$ .

The diverging relaminarization times at the peaks are associated with the presence of a periodic orbit. This phenomenon is shown in figure 11. On the left of the peak located at $Re\approx 181$ , the flow dynamics describes five oscillations which are clearly visible with suitably chosen variables such as the L2-norms of $v$ and $w$ in the appropriately rotated frame of reference. These oscillations correspond to the non-monotonic departure from the location of the initial condition until the basin of attraction of the laminar solution is reached (figure 11 b). As the Reynolds number is increased past the threshold value for the peak, one such oscillation is lost due to the influence of the stable manifold of the laminar solution at shorter time (see the differences between the dashed red and the grey trajectories around $\widetilde{v}=0.035$ and $\widetilde{w}=0.0025$ ). As a consequence, it only takes four oscillations for the flow to decay on the right of this peak, as shown in figure 11(c). At the peak (figure 11 d), the flow follows the stable manifold of the periodic orbit PO5 whose neighbourhood is reached after about $500$ units of time and where the dynamics shadows that described in § 4.1. This approach to an unstable periodic orbit suggests the existence of heteroclinic connections between steady localized states and periodic orbits in plane Couette flow. Figure 12 shows such a connection between the lower branch of EQ and PO5 at $Re\approx 186.17105$ which was obtained by perturbing along the most unstable eigendirection of the lower EQ branch state and time-integrating. After the initial sequence of roll nucleation events, the oscillations become a prominent feature of the flow which readjusts and converges to PO5.

Figure 11.

(a) Trajectories emanating from S5 in R1 and represented through the L2-norms of $v$ and $w$ in the rotated frame of reference ( $\widetilde{w}=\Vert w\Vert \cos 70^{\circ }-\Vert v\Vert \sin 70^{\circ }$ and $\widetilde{v}=\Vert w\Vert \sin 70^{\circ }+\Vert v\Vert \cos 70^{\circ }$ ) for Reynolds numbers chosen right before ( $Re=180.875$ ) and after ( $Re=181.1875$ ) the peak at $Re\approx 181.0625$ . Corresponding time evolution of the averaged kinetic energy $E_{xy}$ before the peak (b) and after the peak (c). (d) Time evolution of $E_{xy}$ at the peak.

Figure 12.

Heteroclinic connection between the lower branch of EQ and PO5 illustrated by the spatiotemporal evolution of $E_{xy}$ for the exact equilibrium found at the lower branch of EQ at $Re=186.17105$ and perturbed along its most unstable eigendirection.

The behaviour observed above extends to all the peaks in the region R1: every time a peak is crossed in the direction of decreasing values of the Reynolds number, the flow undergoes one more oscillation before relaminarizing. This, together with the peak accumulation at $Re_{s}$ , accounts for the gradual increase of the relaminarization time. Conversely, as $Re$ in increased past the rightmost peak of R1, the flow only displays two oscillations before eventual decay.

The other initial conditions led to qualitatively similar results with the difference that the peaks obtained in R1 for S $i$ , $i>5$ , are not associated with diverging relaminarization times. Figure 10(b) shows the behaviour of the relaminarization time in the region R1 for S7 and exemplifies the smooth behaviour of the relaminarization times at the peaks. These peaks correspond to the approach of a periodic orbit constituted of seven rolls and analogous to PO5 in dynamics. The periodic orbit PO5 has only one unstable eigenmode for most of the Reynolds numbers within R1 and, thus, changing the Reynolds number acts as a projection shift of the initial condition onto the unstable manifold of PO5. At the peak, S5 has exactly no projection onto the unstable manifold of PO5, allowing the relaminarization time to approach infinity as the trajectory converges to PO5. Unlike PO5, PO7 has more than one unstable eigendirection and, as a consequence, the projection of S7 onto the unstable manifold of PO7 does not go to zero by simply changing the Reynolds number and the relaminarization time never diverges. A similar reasoning holds for the peaks of initial conditions wider than S5.

Peak accumulation is a generic feature of R1 and is characterized by a geometrical convergence law:

(4.4) $$\begin{eqnarray}Re_{n+1}-Re_{s}(i)=\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}_{i}[Re_{n}-Re_{s}(i)],\end{eqnarray}$$

where $Re_{n}$ is the Reynolds number corresponding to the $n$ th peak ( $n$ is counted from right to left) and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}_{i}$ is the convergence coefficient that is a function of the initial condition S $i$ . Figure 13(a) exemplifies this on S7 and shows very good accuracy between the data and law (4.4) for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}_{7}=0.45$ . The same law applies successfully to other initial conditions, albeit with different convergence ratios $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}_{i}$ . The corresponding convergence ratios are shown for S5, S7, S9, S11 and S13 in figure 13(b) and indicate a decreasing trend as the number of rolls $i$ increases, potentially converging to $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}_{\infty }\approx 0.2$ . This signifies that as the initial condition increases in size, the accumulation of peaks becomes faster and faster and the width of the region R1 decreases, a fact already observed in figure 7 and sketched in figure 9.

Figure 13.

(a) Peak location for S7 (circles) and the corresponding geometric law $Re_{n+1}-Re_{s}=0.45(Re_{n}-Re_{s})$ (solid line). (b) Convergence rates $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}_{i}$ for the five most localized initial conditions.

The overall decreasing trend of the relaminarization time with the Reynolds number can be quantified by a difference between two successive local minima of $t_{relam}$ . This quantity, which we denote $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$ , only has a weak dependence on the initial condition so we will use its value for S5 regardless of the initial condition: $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}\approx 155$ . We can thus infer the following approximation for the relaminarization time at the local minima: $t_{n}=t_{0}+\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}n$ , where $t_{n}$ is the value of the local minimum of $t_{relam}$ located to the left of the peak at $Re_{n}$ and $t_{0}$ is the relaminarization time observed at the local minimum located to the right of the first (highest $Re$ ) peak. In order to obtain a relationship between $t_{n}$ and $Re$ , we approximate the location of the local minimum $Re_{n}^{\prime }$ to be exactly between the left and right peaks: $Re_{n}^{\prime }=(1/2)(Re_{n+1}+Re_{n})$ . Since the solution of (4.4) is $Re_{n}-Re_{s}=[Re_{0}-Re_{s}]\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}_{i}^{n}$ , we obtain

(4.5) $$\begin{eqnarray}t_{n}(Re_{n}^{\prime })=\frac{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}}{\ln \unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}_{i}}\ln \frac{2(Re_{n}^{\prime }-Re_{s})}{(Re_{0}-Re_{s})(1+\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}_{i})}+t_{0}.\end{eqnarray}$$

Extending this law to continuous values of the Reynolds number, we can observe that, close enough to $Re_{s}$ , the envelope of the relaminarization time grows with rate $\text{d}t_{relam}/\text{d}Re=O((\ln \unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}_{i}(Re-Re_{s}))^{-1})$ . The right-hand panel in figure 14 confirms that this law is a good first-order approximation to the relaminarization time for S5 close to the saddle node.

Figure 14.

(a) Relaminarization times against the peak number $n$ at the local minima of the curve in figure 10 for S5 (full circles) and an approximation law (solid line). (b) The relaminarization time for S5 (solid line) together with the first-order approximation law for its local minima (circles): equation (4.5) (dashed line) for $t_{0}=402$ , $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}=155$ , $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}_{i}=\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}_{5}=0.74$ , $Re_{s}=Re_{s}(5)=175.375$ and $Re_{0}=180.375$ .

4.4 Onset of chaotic transients

Further from the snaking, our initial conditions display intermittent chaotic transients. This non-trivial dynamics is partitioned in parameter space into three regions separated by the plateaux described previously. The first such region is R2 and the solutions, although displaying weak sensitivity to the parameter value, do not typically have relaminarization times larger than $t_{relam}=2000$ . Long-lasting chaotic transients can be found in region R3 between $Re=245$ and $Re=252$ , with relaminarization times up to $t_{relam}=O(10^{4})$ , and display much more sensitivity to the parameter value. For $Re>290$ , we enter region R4 where only rare and isolated initial conditions relaminarize within the time periods of interest here.

4.4.1 Splitting

The boundaries of the chaotic regions are identified with the splitting of the initial state into two pulses which then undergo oscillations before decaying. This is best illustrated for the simplest of these regions: R2, which exists for initial conditions wider than S8. Region R2 is small and close to R3 for the narrower initial conditions (see figure 7). It moves to smaller Reynolds numbers and expands for wider initial conditions. Figure 15 shows the relaminarization time within R2 for S13 and space–time plots of $E_{xy}$ for characteristic simulations in R2. At the beginning of R2 ( $Re\approx 202.5$ ), the central part of the localized pattern undergoes decay at $t\approx 300$ , forming two dormant spots that survive until $t\approx 550$ , as shown in figure 15(a1). As the Reynolds number is increased, these spots survive for a longer time and become active, undergoing such oscillations as those described in § 4.1 and resulting in relaminarization times of the order of $10^{3}$ as shown in figure 15(a2). As the Reynolds number is increased within this region, the number of core rolls that decay during the splitting event decreases until it is temporarily suppressed (see the evolution of the pattern at $t\approx 350$ in figure 15 a1,a2,a3,b1). This does not rule out the splitting event completely but rather postpones it: the initial pattern can be observed to oscillate twice before splitting until $Re\approx 206.5$ , but then to oscillate three times before splitting (see figure 15(b2) for instance). This behaviour is observed until $Re\approx 211$ where the evolution mirrors that for $Re<206.5$ : splitting occurs after two oscillations and manifests itself by the decay of the two central rolls, the number of these decaying rolls increasing as $Re$ increases until the edge of R2 (see figure 15 c1,c2,c3).

Figure 15.

The upper left-hand plot shows relaminarization times in R2 for S13. Each of the other nine panels contains a space–time plot of the $xy$ -averaged kinetic energy $E_{xy}$ corresponding to simulations grouped into three sets showing (a) the narrowing of the gap between the two pulses, (b) simulations with an extra oscillation of the original pattern and (c) the widening of the gap between the two pulses. The corresponding Reynolds numbers are located in the upper left-hand plot.

The region R2 is structured as described above until S14 where the gain of one oscillation of the initial pattern is obtained via a sharp peak similar to the peaks observed in R1, instead of an extended region where the inner dynamics changes. We attribute this to the fact that the Reynolds number is too low to sustain spot dynamics. The left boundary of R2 thus becomes less well defined and does not approach $Re_{s}(i)$ as fast for S $i$ , $i\geqslant 14$ , as for $i<14$ as $i$ increases.

An interesting feature of the splitting event that characterizes R2 is that the spanwise width of the spots immediately after splitting at the boundary of R2 is the same for all initial solutions and coincides with that of the lower part of the branch EQ: the resulting structures are constituted of three rolls. This indicates that the boundaries of R2 correspond to the stable manifold of a fixed point that is a bound state of localized structures similar to the lower part of the branch EQ and that are unevenly spaced out. This was confirmed by the successful convergence of several solutions taken right after splitting to the above steady state via a Newton–Krylov search. Figure 16 exemplifies one such steady two-pulse state converged from the flow snapshot taken from the time integration of S13 at $Re=202.546875$ . Convergence from other initial conditions can be achieved and would yield a similar state but with different inner/outer spacing.

Figure 16.

Example of two-pulse localized equilibrium converged by a Newton–Krylov hookstep search. The initial guess for the search was obtained from the snapshot of the time integration of S13 at $Re=202.546875$ at time $t=600$ where the spots formed by the splitting are well separated by the laminar flow.

Figure 17.

Relaminarization time $t_{relam}$ in R3 as a function of the Reynolds number $Re$ for initial condition S15. These results were obtained for Reynolds number increments of $0.03125$ .

4.4.2 Onset of long-lived chaotic transients

The first occurrence of long chaotic transients is found in region R3 which exists for all initial conditions wider than S7 and spans $245<Re<252$ with little dependence on the initial condition. In a similar way to R2, its beginning and end are characterized by the splitting of the initial pattern into two spots. Figure 17 shows the dependence of the relaminarization time on the Reynolds number for initial condition S15 between $Re=244$ and $Re=254$ . For this initial condition, R3 starts at $Re\approx 245$ and finishes at $Re\approx 251.5$ . Simulations within R3 typically display $700<t_{relam}<850$ with most values around $750$ and are only weakly sensitive to the value of the Reynolds number. Exceptions to this are observed in the form of parameter windows where the relaminarization time takes much larger values and where the flow becomes strongly sensitive to the Reynolds number. These windows have various sizes and different initial conditions produce a different number of such windows within R3: e.g. S11 and S15 have four such windows each while S9 only has two. Inside these windows, the sensitivity to the Reynolds number allows the presence of extremely long chaotic transients, the longest of those we obtained being for S9 at $Re=251.375$ where $t_{relam}\approx 21\,320$ . We show in figure 18 such a long simulation for S9, taken at $Re=248.5$ and yielding $t_{relam}\approx 12\,505$ . This simulation starts in the usual way: the initial pattern splits into two spots at around $t=200$ which then oscillate and grow spatially by nucleating rolls on either side. This process continues until about $t=550$ where both spots collide. Shortly after, the central part of the structure collapses in an event that typically leads to the complete relaminarization of the flow. In this specific instance, the ‘outer’ parts of the structure manage to survive and continue their independent evolution. The flow dynamics that ensues is long lived and likely similar to that observed in percolation dynamics (Pomeau Reference Pomeau1986; Barkley Reference Barkley2016; Lemoult et al. Reference Lemoult, Shi, Avila, Jalikop, Avila and Hof2016). Chaotic transients have also been observed at such low Reynolds numbers by Schmiegel & Eckhardt (Reference Schmiegel and Eckhardt2000) and Barkley & Tuckerman (Reference Barkley and Tuckerman2005) using different methods.

Figure 18.

Space–time plot of the $xy$ -averaged kinetic energy $E_{xy}$ for initial condition S9 at $Re=248.75$ in R3 (a) and time evolution of the reflection symmetry indicator $q$ as explained in the text (b).

Lastly, at $Re\approx 290$ , a brutal transition takes place: immediately below the threshold value, all simulations relaminarize in about $300$ units of time whereas we only observed rare cases where relaminarization occurs in less than $2000$ time units above the threshold as can be seen from figure 19. This transitional region, R4, exhibits front propagation and long time scales and suggests transition to turbulence, as it is understood in the statistical sense (Avila et al. Reference Avila, Moxey, de Lozar, Avila, Barkley and Hof2011; Shi et al. Reference Shi, Avila and Hof2013; Barkley Reference Barkley2016). In spite of the long time scales, the dynamics in R4 is different from that observed in R3, where we observe a competition between the growth of the structure via front propagation and the sudden decay of roll clusters (see figure 18). Here, front propagation overwhelms cluster decay and leads to domain-filling states. Figure 20 shows a typical R4 simulation, observed for S13 at $Re=300$ . The presence of relatively large number of long-lived simulations in R4 allows the quantification of the front speed. We did not find any significant difference in front speed between initial conditions. Additionally, there was no apparent variation in the front speed in the interval $Re\in [280;350]$ ; the average front speed value is $\langle c\rangle \approx 0.02$ . These results compare very well with those of Duguet et al. (Reference Duguet, Le Maître and Schlatter2011).

Figure 19.

Relaminarization times in R4 for the right saddle-node states of EQ time-integrated for $Re\in [270;350]$ . Relaminarization times were cut off at $t_{relam}=2000$ to avoid overlapping and save computation time. As a consequence, the large plateaux where $t_{relam}=2000$ correspond to long-lasting chaotic transients that extend beyond $t=2000$ .

Figure 20.

Space–time plot of the $xy$ -averaged kinetic energy $E_{xy}$ for initial condition S13 at $Re=300$ in R4. Relaminarization is not shown.

Since the equilibrium initial conditions under consideration are all reflection symmetric, it is important to understand how the flow departs from the symmetry subspace. We quantify the deviation from the reflection symmetry by

(4.6) $$\begin{eqnarray}q(t)=\left(\frac{1}{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{x}\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{y}\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{z}}\iiint _{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FA}}[u(x,y,z,t)+u(-x,-y,-z,t)]^{2}\,\text{d}x\,\text{d}y\,\text{d}z\right)^{1/2}.\end{eqnarray}$$

A typical time evolution for this quantity is shown in figure 18(b). The deviation from the reflection symmetry grows until it reaches $O(1)$ values at $t\approx 2500$ . Similar evolutions of $q$ are observed in other simulations and imply that asymmetry becomes important only for $t\gtrsim 2000$ . All shorter simulations can be treated as fully symmetric ones. This was confirmed by the recalculation of one of the relaminarization curves from figure 7 with imposed reflection symmetry. The only simulations exhibiting significant asymmetry correspond to chaotic transients with long enough lifetime which occur only in R3 and R4.