A fate-alternating transitional regime in contracting liquid filaments

The fate of a contracting liquid filament depends on the Ohnesorge number, the initial aspect ratio and surface perturbation. Generally, it is believed that there exists a critical aspect ratio such that longer filaments break up and shorter ones recoil into a single drop. Through computational and experimental studies, we report a transitional regime for filaments with a broad range of intermediate aspect ratios, where there exist multiple thresholds at which a novel breakup mode alternates with a no-break mode. We develop a simple model considering the superposition of capillary waves, which can predict the complicated new phase diagram. In this model, the breakup results from constructive interference between the capillary waves that originate from the ends of the filament.