Taylor cones in a leaky dielectric liquid under an ac electric field

Conical points of a leaky dielectric drop surrounded by a dielectric gas in an external ac electric field are investigated. A novel class of steady conical tips depending on the permittivity ratio and applied signal frequency is presented. It is found that conical solutions with very small angles are possible (angles much smaller than the classical Taylor cone angle 49.3 degrees for a conducting drop in a dc field); this result can be relevant to the observations of small cone angles in Chetwani, Maheshwari, and Chang experiments [N. Chetwani, S. Maheshwari, and H.-C. Chang, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 204501 (2008)].