Nonaxisymmetric instability of shear-banded Taylor-Couette flow

Recent experiments show that shear-banded flows of semidilute wormlike micelles in Taylor-Couette geometry exhibit a flow instability in the form of Taylor-like vortices. Here we perform the nonaxisymmetric linear stability analysis of the diffusive Johnson-Segalman model of shear banding and show that the nature of this instability depends on the applied shear rate. For the experimentally relevant parameters, we find that at the beginning of the stress plateau the instability is driven by the interface between the bands, while most of the stress plateau is occupied by the bulk instability of the high-shear-rate band. Our work significantly alters the recently proposed stability diagram of shear-banded flows based on axisymmetric analysis.