Atomic dynamics of explosive boiling of liquid-argon films

Abstract

Using molecular-dynamics simulation, we study the explosive boiling of thin liquid-argon films adsorbed on a metal surface. This process might be induced by heating the metal substrate by an ultra-fast laser. Upon sudden heating of the metal to temperatures well beyond the critical temperature of Ar, the film starts boiling. While thin films, with thickness below seven monolayers, fragment completely, in larger films only the near-surface Ar layers vaporize. The resulting vapor pressure drives the expansion of the remaining liquid overlayers. By monitoring the space and time dependence of the hydrodynamic variables density, pressure, and temperature, as well as the local thermodynamic state in the Ar sample, we obtain a detailed microscopic picture of the explosive boiling process. Finally, as a result of the fragmentation process, the abundance distribution of the clusters formed in the expansion follows a power-law distribution for cluster sizes m ≲ 10.