Phase Transition to Turbulence via Moving Fronts

Directed percolation (DP), a universality class of continuous phase transitions, has recently been established as a possible route to turbulence in subcritical wall-bounded flows. In canonical straight pipe or planar flows, the transition occurs via discrete large-scale turbulent structures, known as puffs in pipe flow or bands in planar flows, which either self-replicate or laminarize. However, these processes might not be universal to all subcritical shear flows. Here, we design a numerical experiment that eliminates discrete structures in plane Couette flow and show that it follows a different, simpler transition scenario: turbulence proliferates via expanding fronts and decays via spontaneous creation of laminar zones. We map this phase transition onto a stochastic one-variable system. The level of turbulent fluctuations dictates whether moving-front transition is discontinuous, or continuous and within the DP universality class, with profound implications for other hydrodynamic systems.