The authors study small disturbances to the periodic, plane Couette flow in the 3D incompressible Navier-Stokes equations at high Reynolds number Re. They prove that for sufficiently regular initial data of size $epsilon leq c_0mathbf ^-1$ for some universal $c_0 > 0$, the solution is global, remains within $O(c_0)$ of the Couette flow in $L^2$, and returns to the Couette flow as $t ightarrow infty $. For times $t gtrsim mathbf ^1/3$, the streamwise dependence is damped by a mixing-enhanced dissipation effect and the solution is rapidly attracted to the class of ""2.5 dimensional''...

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