On the jets produced by drops impacting a deep liquid pool and by bursting bubbles

Abstract

Here we provide a unified theoretical description of two different physical situations in which liquid jets are expelled out of the bulk of a liquid as a consequence of the capillary collapse of a void. We demonstrate that the velocity field giving rise to the emergence of these jets can be calculated as the flow generated by a line of sinks with a length and an intensity that can be expressed in terms of the initial cavity radius and the wavelength and velocity of the capillary waves propagating along the cavity walls. The predicted jet speeds, which are expressed through algebraic equations, are in good quantitative agreement with those obtained from experiments and from the simulations of bubbles bursting on a free surface or after the implosion of the crater formed when a drop impacts a liquid pool.