An intermittency route to global instability in low-density jets

Above a critical Reynolds number ($Re$), a low-density jet can become globally unstable, transitioning from a steady state (i.e. a fixed point) to a self-excited oscillatory state (i.e. a limit cycle) via a Hopf bifurcation. In this experimental study, we show that this transition can sometimes involve intermittency. When $Re$ is just slightly above the critical point, intermittent bursts of high-amplitude periodic oscillations emerge amidst a background of low-amplitude aperiodic fluctuations. As $Re$ increases further, these intermittent bursts persist longer in time until they dominate the overall dynamics, causing the jet to transition fully to a periodic limit cycle. We identify this as Type-II Pomeau-Manneville intermittency by quantifying the statistical distribution of the duration of the aperiodic fluctuations at the onset of intermittency. This study shows that the transition to global instability in low-density jets is not always abrupt but can involve an intermediate state with characteristics of both the initial fixed point and the final limit cycle.