NEW RAYLEIGH-TAYLOR-LIKE SURFACE INSTABILITY AND NUCLEAR MULTIFRAGMENTATION

Nuclear disks and bubbles formed in central heavy-ion collisions, as simulated by means of Boltzmann-like kinetic equations, break up into several fragments due to a new kind of Rayleigh-Taylor-like surface instability. We demonstrate that a sheet of liquid, stable in the limit of noninteracting surfaces, becomes unstable due to surface-surface interactions. The onset of this instability is determined analytically. The relevance of this instability to nuclear multifragmentation is discussed.