Coherent motion in excited free shear flows

The application of the inviscid instability approach to externally excited turbulent free shear flows at high Reynolds numbers is explored. Attention is given to the cases of a small-deficit plane turbulent wake, a plane turbulent jet, an axisymmetric jet, the nonlinear evolution of instabilities in free shear flows, the concept of the 'preferred mode', vortex pairing in turbulent mixing layers, and experimental results for the control of free turbulent shear layers. The special features often attributed to pairing or to the preferred mode are found to be difficult to comprehend; the concept of feedback requires further substantiation in the case of incompressible flow.