Minimum size for the top jet drop from a bursting bubble

Jet drops ejected from bursting bubbles are ubiquitous, transporting aromatics from sparkling beverages, pathogens from contaminated water sources, and sea salts and organic species from the ocean surface to the atmosphere. In all of these processes, the smallest drops are noteworthy because their slow settling velocities allow them to persist longer and travel further than large drops, provided they escape the viscous sublayer. Yet it is unclear what sets the limit to how small these jet drops can become. Here we directly observe microscale jet drop formation and demonstrate that the smallest jet drops are not produced by the smallest jet drop-producing bubbles, as predicted numerically by Duchemin et al. [Duchemin et al., Phys. Fluids 14, 3000 (2002)]. Through a combination of high-speed imaging and numerical simulation, we show that the minimum jet drop size is set by an interplay of viscous and inertial-capillary forces both prior and subsequent to the jet formation. Based on the observation of self-similar jet growth, the jet drop size is decomposed into a shape factor and a jet growth time to rationalize the nonmonotonic relationship of drop size to bubble size. These findings provide constraints on submicron aerosol production from jet drops in the ocean.