Stability Conditions for Symmetric and Antisymmetric Perturbations in Evaporating Droplets

Abstract

The importance of accounting for collective perturbations in a pair of identical evaporating droplets is demonstrated using a minimal theoretical model. A linear system with droplet-exchange symmetry is decomposed into symmetric and antisymmetric modes. The resulting stability condition image shows that the decay of an individual mode does not guarantee the stability of the entire pair. The result applies to the reduced model and is not used as a substitute for critical parameters that have not yet been calculated for real droplets.