Let the perturbation velocity and pressure be , with real . Linearizing the Euler equations about the inviscid parallel shear flow gives
Use , to satisfy incompressibility. The first momentum equation gives ; differentiate it and use the second equation. The Rayleigh equation for inviscid shear flow follows:
A growing temporal normal mode has and growth rate .
Rayleigh's inflection-point theorem states that such an instability of a smooth parallel profile requires to change sign somewhere. To prove it, divide by , multiply by , integrate over and integrate the second derivative by parts. Decay removes the endpoint terms, giving
Taking the imaginary part yields
The weighting is nonnegative. A one-signed that is not identically zero cannot satisfy this identity for a nontrivial mode; otherwise the mode vanishes on an interval and uniqueness of the differential equation forces it to vanish throughout. If , the real part of the identity is already a strictly positive integral for a nontrivial decaying mode. This proves the necessary sign-change condition.
Fjørtoft's theorem strengthens this: if is the velocity at an inflection point, instability requires somewhere. This is a necessary condition, not a sufficient criterion. For , and
The possibility of instability is therefore consistent with Fjørtoft's theorem.
For the piecewise-linear approximation, within each of the three regions. The decaying solutions outside and the two independent interior solutions can be written
At each corner, the normal velocity is continuous, so is continuous. Pressure matching at a piecewise-linear shear interface additionally gives , hence . At the slope jumps from to ; at it jumps from to . Substituting the decaying outer solutions gives
Thus the inviscid instability of a piecewise-linear mixing layer has dispersion relation
At , , so the root with positive imaginary part is an explicitly growing mode, with growth rate . More generally the unstable interval is , where the unique solves . This direct calculation establishes instability of the approximation; passing a necessary inflection test alone would not have established it.
Take , with time convention , and use the Fourier transform pair , . For an acoustic velocity potential, and . Its harmonic amplitude solves the Helmholtz equation. The outgoing Fourier component has the form
The outgoing acoustic square-root branch is fixed by decay for evanescent components and upward radiation for propagating components:
A precise causal prescription is to replace by , , select for real , invert on the real axis, and take . It corresponds to switching on the forcing from the remote past. The limiting inversion contour passes below the positive outgoing surface-wave pole and above the negative one. The branch points are approached with the same causal prescription; analytic continuation during contour deformation must remain on this sheet. A principal real square root with positive imaginary part inside the acoustic interval would produce incoming sound and the wrong solution.
The elastic membrane's normal velocity equals the fluid velocity at the boundary, so . Consequently
The elastic membrane balance therefore gives
Writing , the one-sided fluid-loaded membrane radiation formulas are
The sign of the fluid term describes positive added mass of an evanescent fluid layer, not negative inertia.
For , the acoustic saddle point is , with . Applying the stated method of steepest descent result gives
Since in amplitude notation, the angular acoustic directivity of the pressure, apart from angle-independent factors, is
The intensity directivity is proportional to . This cylindrical radiating field has amplitude of order . The formula is for fixed interior angles; grazing-angle limits require a separate uniform approximation.
For real , is positive, as , and as . A root exists. A root also requires . In that range,
so the root is unique. Evenness supplies the second root, . There are no real roots inside : the fluid-loading term is real and nonzero while the other term is purely imaginary. Thus there are exactly two real physical-sheet roots, , for nonzero forcing frequency, positive elastic-sheet tension and positive fluid mass density. The zero-frequency static limit is not a two-distinct-root statement.
These roots are counterpropagating evanescent acoustic surface waves coupled to the membrane:
Their normal profiles decay as , and their phase speed is below both and the vacuum membrane speed. They matter for the elastic membrane motion and for observations near its surface, but are not automatically part of the leading far-field radiation. A residue is picked up only when the causal contour deformation crosses its pole; at fixed its magnitude is exponentially small, .
For example, in the right half-plane put , and . The pole is at and the saddle at . The steepest-descent path has . At the pole height its left branch has real coordinate ; comparing it with the original contour just to the right of the pole shows that its residue is crossed for
The analogous sector lies near for the negative pole. This is why the existence of real dispersion zeros alone does not make their residues relevant in every observation direction.
Assume . Let be the -dimensional irreducible sl2 Lie algebra representation. Choose a weight basis with weights ; this lists the usual irreducible weight string in increasing order. Its exterior power has basis for , so its formal character is
The last sum is the Gaussian binomial coefficient . To verify the product identity, splitting the subsets according to whether they contain gives
The product satisfies the same recurrence, after putting both terms over their common denominator. Thus induction identifies it with the subset sum, proving it is a polynomial with nonnegative integer coefficients.
The quantum integer convention in the PDF has
Multiplying these factors in the factorial quotient gives
This establishes the required representation-theoretic interpretation.
By the Weyl complete reducibility theorem, write , where are nonnegative integers. The classification of finite-dimensional sl2 representations gives
Every exterior-power weight has parity and lies between and . Therefore only with occur. For with that parity, the coefficient of is
The coefficients consequently increase toward the middle of the occupied weight string and decrease afterward. If , then . Hence
This is the unimodality of Gaussian binomial coefficients, proved through parity unimodality of an sl2 character. It includes , when the character is one.
There is a normalization qualification in the printed wording. The symmetric quantum-binomial quotient is a Laurent polynomial in , with exponents spaced by two; the unimodality just proved is for that occupied parity, or equivalently for the ordinary polynomial after setting and removing the monomial shift. If one instead includes every integer exponent of , the literal coefficient claim is false: has coefficients . The representation-theoretic conclusion is unimodality on the parity string, and ordinary unimodality of the Gaussian polynomial.
Take the diagonal Cartan subalgebra of and let select its th diagonal entry, so on it. Use simple roots , . The fundamental weights are and . The defining representation has highest vector and the dual has highest vector . Thus
Their crystal basis diagrams are and , with weights and respectively. Use the same crystal tensor-product rule as in2(d): lowering acts on the first factor when ; otherwise on the second. Raising uses the first factor when , so it reverses each lowering arrow. An edge is absent if the selected factor operation is zero.
For , abbreviate by . The complete color-one edge list is , , ; the complete color-two list is , , . There are two connected components:
For example because , whereas because equality selects the second factor and . This explains which ordered tensor labels lie in each component. At the representation level, the two components are the six-dimensional symmetric square and the three-dimensional exterior square:
For , abbreviate by . The complete color-one edge list is , , ; the complete color-two list is , , . The isolated vertex is . Thus the two highest vertices are of weight , and of weight zero. Lowering from the former visits all eight other vertices. Consequently
This also follows concretely from : the first term is the Adjoint representation, with highest weight the highest root, and the second is the trivial Lie algebra representation. The ordinary invariant vector is , not the bare tensor suggested by the singleton's crystal label. The explicit edge lists and the diagrams exhibit all eighteen tensor vertices and justify the four highest weights.
Figure 1.
All components of the defining A2 tensor square and defining tensor dual crystals, with every lowering edge labeled by its simple-root color
. Details.

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