Coherence resonance in low-density jets

Coherence resonance is a phenomenon in which the response of a stable nonlinear system to noise exhibits a peak in coherence at an intermediate noise amplitude. We report the first experimental evidence of coherence resonance in a purely hydrodynamic system, a low-density jet whose variants can be found in many natural and engineering systems. This evidence comprises four parts: (i) the jet’s response amplitude increases as the Reynolds number approaches the instability boundary under a constant noise amplitude; (ii) as the noise amplitude increases, the amplitude distribution of the jet response first becomes unimodal, then bimodal, and finally unimodal again; (iii) a distinct peak emerges in the coherence factor at an intermediate noise amplitude; and (iv) for a subcritical Hopf bifurcation, the decay rate of the autocorrelation function exhibits a maximum at an intermediate noise amplitude, but for a supercritical Hopf bifurcation, the decay rate decreases monotonically with increasing noise amplitude. It is clear that coherence resonance can provide valuable information about a system’s nonlinearity even in the unconditionally stable regime, opening up new possibilities for its use in system identification and flow control.