Femtosecond laser-induced cavitation seeds liquid-jet breakup beyond the Rayleigh-Plateau stability limit
Abstract
The Rayleigh-Plateau instability predicts that infinitesimal perturbations of a liquid jet grow only for kR < 1, with kR = 1 marking the classical stability boundary. Here, we show that femtosecond-laser-induced cavitation generates a localized, impulsive recoil perturbation on a flowing liquid jet, enabling a two-dimensional map of jet breakup across the (kR, epsilon/R) plane. The perturbation's spacing (wavelength) and strength (amplitude) are set independently by the laser repetition rate and pulse energy, respectively. At low amplitudes, tuning the repetition rate recovers the classical Rayleigh-Plateau dispersion relation and its kR = 1 cutoff, while increasing the wavelength enables controlled generation of monodisperse droplet trains, bidisperse droplet populations, and ultimately isolated single droplets. Along the amplitude axis, low pulse energies produce a seed that amplifies only the imposed wavenumber, whereas above a critical energy Ec, the seed broadens to excite many wavenumbers simultaneously. At still higher amplitudes, we demonstrate deterministic breakup for kR > 1, extending to kR = 1.9, with laser-synchronized droplet production rates up to 0.2 MHz. These results establish localized femtosecond-laser-induced cavitation as a route to controlled Rayleigh-Plateau breakup both within and beyond the classical linear-stability boundary.
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BibTeX
@misc{singh2026femtosecond,
title = {{Femtosecond laser-induced cavitation seeds liquid-jet breakup beyond the Rayleigh-Plateau stability limit}},
author = {Sourabh Singh and Tamanna and S. Sree Harsha and Prashant Kumar Singh},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.01597},
eprint = {2610.01597},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.01597},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Femtosecond laser-induced cavitation seeds liquid-jet breakup beyond the Rayleigh-Plateau stability limit
AU - Sourabh Singh
AU - Tamanna
AU - S. Sree Harsha
AU - Prashant Kumar Singh
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/01
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.01597
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.01597
AB - The Rayleigh-Plateau instability predicts that infinitesimal perturbations of a liquid jet grow only for kR < 1, with kR = 1 marking the classical stability boundary. Here, we show that femtosecond-laser-induced cavitation generates a localized, impulsive recoil perturbation on a flowing liquid jet, enabling a two-dimensional map of jet breakup across the (kR, epsilon/R) plane. The perturbation's spacing (wavelength) and strength (amplitude) are set independently by the laser repetition rate and pulse energy, respectively. At low amplitudes, tuning the repetition rate recovers the classical Rayleigh-Plateau dispersion relation and its kR = 1 cutoff, while increasing the wavelength enables controlled generation of monodisperse droplet trains, bidisperse droplet populations, and ultimately isolated single droplets. Along the amplitude axis, low pulse energies produce a seed that amplifies only the imposed wavenumber, whereas above a critical energy Ec, the seed broadens to excite many wavenumbers simultaneously. At still higher amplitudes, we demonstrate deterministic breakup for kR > 1, extending to kR = 1.9, with laser-synchronized droplet production rates up to 0.2 MHz. These results establish localized femtosecond-laser-induced cavitation as a route to controlled Rayleigh-Plateau breakup both within and beyond the classical linear-stability boundary.
ER -