IntroductionFluid mixing is of surpassing interest in science and engineering applications. [1][2][3][4] In many cases, we need fast mixing, such as in combustion, 5 acoustic noise reduction, 6 and protein folding in biotechnology. 7 Traditionally, agitated tank and static mixer, 8,9 jet, and mixing layer 10,11 are often used to enhance mixing. Other mixing augmentation methods include chaotic mixing at relatively low Reynolds number flows 12,13 and an oscillatory flow mixer consisting of tubes fitted with equally spaced orifice plate baffles. 14 Recently, Wang 15,16 introduced a novel extremely fast mixing process in a confined three-dimensional mixing layer in a pipe (that is, the inlet of the pipe is a mixing layer), where the initial two streams can be mixed, at least on the large scale, within one pipe diameter downstream of the splitterplate. The rapid mixing can also be obtained at relatively small Reynolds number flow in this confined configuration, where the Reynolds number is 400 based on the mean velocity and pipe diameter and the original flow is laminar without forcing. For this relatively small Reynolds number flow, the scalar power spectrum can display Ϫ5/3 Oboukhov-Corrsin spectrum in the near field under strong forcing. This could have a substantial impact in technologies that require fast mixing, both in laminar and turbulent flows. Such an interesting flow could also be a new candidate for homogeneous turbulence Nygaard and Glezer,28 Wiltse and Glezer, 29 and many others. An important common conclusion from these works is that the spreading rate, which is one of the most important fundamental parameters and is often used as a mixing criterion in the mixing layer (see, for example, Cantwell 30 and Dimotakis 31 ), can be enhanced through the active forcing.Unfortunately the effect of conventional initial periodic forcing in mixing layers for mixing enhancement is limited by the saturation phenomenon arising from the nonlinear effect. 24,25 For instance, Fiedler and Mensing 27 observed the saturation when the forcing amplitude was sufficiently high, that is, the intensity of the maximum periodic transverse velocity constituents and saturation Strouhal number became constant and independent of forcing amplitude when the forcing amplitude was Ͼ6.5%. They obtained the same mean spreading rate for both strong and weak forcing, that is, twice the neutral value and independent of forcing amplitude. Weisbrot and Wygnanski 32 also investigated strong forcing and reported no distinguishing difference in the spreading rate from that of Fiedler et al. 33 and Oster and Wygnanski. 25 On the foundation of the above-mentioned observations and that of others, Browand and Ho 34 proposed a quasi-universal spreading rate of the forced and unforced mixing layers.In the confined mixing layer, however, Wang 15,16 surprisingly found that the aforementioned saturation limitation of the spreading rate of the shear layer could be overcome when the flow was forced under a specific narrow-frequency band. Thus, the mixing ca...