Cavitation model of micropoint explosion

In a strong electric field, liquid metal of a micropoint is in the extended metastable state. At a certain degree of superheating, rapidly growing vapor bubbles arise spontaneously in it (vapor cavitation or explosive boiling), leading to the explosion of the micropoint. The resulting mixture of droplets in vapor expands with a high velocity to transform into plasma bunches. The field dependences obtained with this model for the explosion delay time and for the droplet size agree qualitatively with the experimental data for tungsten micropoints. (C) 2002 MAIK Nauka / Interperiodica.