title: Universality crossover of the pinch-off shape profiles of collapsing liquid nanobridges in vacuum and gaseous environments.
abstract: Liquid propane nanobridges were found through molecular dynamics simulations to exhibit in vacuum a symmetric break-up profile shaped as two cones joined in their apexes. With a surrounding gas of sufficiently high pressure, a long-thread profile develops with an asymmetric shape. The emergence of a long-thread profile, discussed previously for macroscopic fluid structures, originates from the curvature-dependent evaporation-condensation processes of the nanobridge in a surrounding gas. A modified stochastic hydrodynamic description captures the crossover between these universal break-up regimes.
authors.affiliation: School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0430, USA.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Kang
authors.forename: Uzi
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Landman