The image I've attached is that of the engine of a 787 Dreamliner. The guy who worked on the sawtooth design wrote that it reduces noise. This means less energy wasted energizing air to produce that noise. I'd guess that there would be small vortices forming at each point on the trailing edge, but that all the vortices combined would take less energy to maintain than a possible single large one trailing from a smooth trailing edge.
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