Three-dimensional absolute and convective instabilities, and spatially amplifying waves in parallel shear flows (Q1186491)

We extend the analytic formalism for linear absolute and convective instabilities in parallel shear flows to the three-dimensional case. The presentation in this paper is divided as follows. In Section 2 we give a mathematical formulation of the stability problem with a short review of the method in the 2-D case. The analytic formalism of 3-D absolute and convective instabilities is given in Section 3. The analytic causality condition for spatially amplifying 3-D waves is derived in Section 4. Section 5 presents a treatment of a simple model example. In the end some concluding remarks with regard to the numerical implementation of the formalism, and to possible applications to real flows are made.