Breakup of an uncharged droplet in an electrostatic field

The breakup of an uncharged electrically conducting liquid dropet placed in a uniform electrostatic field into two daughter droplets caused by strong nonspheroidal deformation is qualitatively analyzed by applying the principle of minimum potential energy under spontaneous virtual variations of the droplet’s state. It is shown that the breakup mechanism involves asymmetric mass distribution among the daughter droplets, which are found to be stable with respect to their respective intrinsic charges.