Suppression of capillary instability in a confined quantum liquid filament

TL;DR

This paper investigates how transverse harmonic confinement can suppress the Rayleigh-Plateau instability in quantum liquid filaments, revealing a stabilization mechanism that depends on trap frequency.

Contribution

It extends the theoretical understanding of capillary instability suppression in quantum liquids by including transverse confinement effects and provides a quantitative analysis of stabilization conditions.

Findings

Increased confinement suppresses the Rayleigh-Plateau instability.

A critical trap frequency exists beyond which the filament is stabilized.

Theoretical results are validated against Gross-Pitaevskii simulations.

Abstract

Quantum Bose-Bose mixtures with strong attraction can form self-bound, liquid-like droplets stabilized by quantum fluctuations. Despite equilibrium densities much lower than those of classical liquids, these droplets exhibit finite surface tension and liquid-like behaviors. Recent experiments have demonstrated Rayleigh-Plateau instability in elongated droplets confined in an optical waveguide. Here we consider the case of an infinite filament and extend the theoretical description to include transverse harmonic confinement. By solving the Bogoliubov-deGennes equations within a single-component framework, benchmarked against full Gross-Pitaevskii simulations, we show that increasing confinement progressively suppresses the instability, leading to complete stabilization beyond a critical trap frequency.