Mechanism for instability in a charged conducting droplet

It is shown that instability in ellipsoidal charged droplets is very sensitive to the eccentricity e, and that the critical value of the parameter nu = Q sub 2/4Pi alpha R cubed for onset of instability decreases rapidly as e increases. When nu reaches the value at which the fundamental droplet mode becomes unstable, the instability causes e to increase without bound, so that the third, fourth, and higher modes become unstable until a jet forms, the droplet loses some of its charge, and the droplet is stabilized. The proposed instability mechanism reconciles Rayleigh's theory of unstable charged droplets with experimental observations.