Centered rarefaction wave with a liquid-gas phase transition in the approximation of “phase-flip” hydrodynamics

Abstract

It is proposed to evaluate the effects of thermodynamic metastability on fluid dynamics by comparing two different ideal-hydrodynamics solutions --- one obtained with the fully equilibrium equation of state using the Maxwell construction, and the other in what we call the phase-flip approximation. The latter is based on the assumption of instantaneous decay of metastable states upon reaching the spinodal. The proposed method is applied to the classical problem of the centered rarefaction wave by expansion into vacuum, for which exact analytical solutions exist in both approximations. It is shown that the rapid decay of metastable states leads to the formation of a rarefaction shock in the expanding flow. Implications for the laser-heating experiments are discussed.