Turbulence generation through an iterative cascade of the elliptical instability

International audienceThe essence of turbulent flow is the conveyance of kinetic energy through the formation, interaction, and destruction of eddies over a wide range of spatial scalesfrom the largest scales where energy is injected, down to the smallest scales where it is dissipated through viscosity. For nearly a century, this universal energy cascade has been the foundation of our understanding for how turbulent flows function. However, a mechanistic description of how ensembles of vortices interact to drive this energy cascade remains elusive. Here we introduce one essential mechanism for turbulence. We show that a sequence of the elliptical instability, arising from the close interaction between counter-rotating vortices, leads to the emergence of turbulent flow. We demonstrate how the nonlinear development of the elliptical instability generates an ordered array of antiparallel secondary filaments, which are perpendicular to the original vortex tubes. These secondary filaments interact with one another, leading to the generation of even smaller tertiary filaments. This iterated cascade of the elliptical instability produces vortices of smaller and smaller sizes, until viscosity damps out all motion. In our experiments and simulations, we clearly observe two and three iterations of this cascade, respectively. Our observations indicate that the elliptical instability could be a fundamental mechanism by which the turbulent cascade develops and is sustained