Homogeneous Bubble Nucleation driven by local hot spots: a Molecular Dynamics Study
Chemical Physics
2009-09-01 v1
Abstract
We report a Molecular Dynamics study of homogenous bubble nucleation in a Lennard-Jones fluid. The rate of bubble nucleation is estimated using forward-flux sampling (FFS). We find that cavitation starts with compact bubbles rather than with ramified structures as had been suggested by Shen and Debenedetti (J. Chem. Phys. 111:3581, 1999). Our estimate of the bubble-nucleation rate is higher than predicted on the basis of Classical Nucleation Theory (CNT). Our simulations show that local temperature fluctuations correlate strongly with subsequent bubble formation - this mechanism is not taken into account in CNT.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0908.4447,
title = {Homogeneous Bubble Nucleation driven by local hot spots: a Molecular Dynamics Study},
author = {Zun-Jing Wang and Chantal Valeriani and Daan Frenkel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0908.4447},
year = {2009}
}