| Abstract: | Times of metastable droplet relaxation to their equilibrium state are calculated at saturated vapor pressures, depending on the droplet size. It is shown that for small droplets with radius R = 6 molecular diameters (or ~2 nm) the relaxation times are ~1 ns (which is comparable to the characteristic flight times of rarefied gas molecules). For large droplets with radius R ~ 800 molecular diameters, the relaxation times are as long as 10 μs. At a fixed droplet radius (6 ≤ R ≤ 800), the range of variation in relaxation time from the melting point to the critical temperature does not exceed one order of magnitude: the lower the temperature, the slower the relaxation process. |
