Wake turbulence is a disturbance in the atmosphere that forms behind an aircraft as it passes through the air. It includes several components, the most significant of which are wingtip vortices and jet-wash, the rapidly moving gases expelled from a jet engine.

Wingtip vortices are circular patterns of rotating air left behind a wing as it generates lift. The name is a misnomer because the cores of the vortices are slightly inboard of the wing tips. Wingtip vortices are sometimes named trailing or lift-induced vortices because they also occur at points other than at the wing tips. Indeed, vorticity is trailed at any point on the wing where the lift varies span-wise ; it eventually rolls up into large vortices near the wingtip, at the edge of flap devices, or at other abrupt changes in wing planform.