Neutral curves and traveling waves in plane Poiseuille flow

Abstract

We study the spectrum of the Orr--Sommerfeld operator associated with the incompressible plane Poiseuille flow in the high-Reynolds-number regime. In the Tollmien--Schlichting eigenvalue region, we prove the existence and uniqueness of the lower and upper branches of the neutral curve. For each sufficiently small fixed wavenumber $α$, the viscosities corresponding to the lower and upper neutral branches satisfy $ν\sim |α|^7$ and $ν\sim |α|^{11}$, respectively. Equivalently, for each sufficiently small viscosity $ν$, the corresponding lower and upper neutral wavenumbers satisfy $α^2\sim ν^{2/7}$ and $α^2\sim ν^{2/11}$, respectively. We also establish the simplicity of the neutral eigenvalues and verify the transversal crossing condition on both neutral branches. The proof is based on a boundary-adapted version of the Rayleigh--Airy iteration scheme, together with precise expansions and refined estimates for the correction terms and their parameter derivatives. These spectral results verify the assumptions required in the classical Hopf bifurcation framework of Joseph--Sattinger \cite{JS1972} and Iooss \cite{Iooss1972}, and hence yield traveling-wave solutions bifurcating from the plane Poiseuille flow at the neutral points.