Odd-viscosity-induced instability in shear flows

Abstract: Odd viscosity is a nondissipative component of the viscosity tensor that arises in fluids with broken time-reversal symmetry. Despite conserving energy, we show that odd viscosity can qualitatively alter hydrodynamic stability by generating exponentially growing modes that are absent in conventional fluids. For plane Poiseuille flow, we derive the odd-viscous generalization of the Orr--Sommerfeld--Squire equations and find a new instability that first emerges for spanwise perturbations and extends to oblique modes through the amplification of odd-viscous forces in critical layers. The instability originates from the non-normal dynamics of shear flows: conventional fluids support transiently growing disturbances through the lift-up mechanism, while odd viscosity provides a feedback between wall-normal velocity and vorticity that converts this transient growth into a self-sustaining exponentially growing mode. More generally, we show that an energy-conserving perturbation can destabilize a non-normal dynamical system only when the unperturbed system supports transient growth. Our results establish a direct connection between transient growth, non-normality, and instability induced by nondissipative forces, with implications extending beyond odd-viscous hydrodynamics.