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Receptivity and instability of the hypersonic flow over moderately blunt cones

With a view to identifying and understanding the linear receptivity and amplification mechanisms that underpin laminar-to-turbulent transition over blunt bodies in hypersonic flow, we use resolvent analysis to study the flow over a blunt cone with 7° half-angle at Mach number $M_{\infty} = 6$, zero angle of attack, and nose-radius-based Reynolds number $Re_{R_n} = 90000$. Optimal forcing and responses are obtained for frequencies up to 330 kHz and azimuthal wavenumbers between 0 and 200. Wall-temperature effects are accounted for by considering both isothermal ($T_w =$ 300 K) and adiabatic wall conditions. The resolvent analysis shows that stationary streak modes are the most amplified in the isothermal case, followed by entropy-layer modes between 20 and 140 kHz. In the adiabatic case, the $1^{st}$ Mack mode is the most amplified. The entropy layer, caused by the nose-tip bluntness, has a profound influence on the receptivity structures. For the optimal streak mode, the most intense receptivity structures lie deep in the entropy layer, further away from the boundary-layer edge compared to the equivalent sharp-cone streak mode. This indicates that atmospheric disturbances may excite streak-like instability without fully penetrating the boundary layer. For the entropy-layer modes, the dominant receptivity and fluctuation signatures are located within the entropy layer. An energy-budget analysis reveals that these modes are most susceptible to kinetic disturbances and they sign the most on temperature fluctuations. These modes are found to leverage a temperature mixing mechanism that exploits the baseflow's wall-normal temperature gradient in the entropy layer to grow.