Hydrodynamic coarsening of bubbles in a dense liquid: A molecular dynamics perspective

We investigate the kinetics of bubble coarsening in a single-component Lennard-Jones fluid using large-scale molecular dynamics simulations. A homogeneous high-temperature system is quenched below the vapor-liquid critical temperature to induce nucleation and growth of vapor bubbles within a dense liquid matrix. The structural evolution is characterized through two-point correlation functions and the static structure factor, both of which exhibit dynamic scaling and sharp interfaces consistent with Porod's law. The time-dependent characteristic length scale, extracted from the correlation function, displays a robust power-law growth ℓ(t) ∼ tα. Finite size scaling analysis across different system sizes yields α = 1.0, establishing that the coarsening is dominated by viscous hydrodynamic interactions rather than classical diffusion-limited Ostwald ripening predicted by the Lifshitz-Slyozov-Wagner theory. These results provide atomistic evidence for fluid flow-controlled coarsening in vapor-liquid systems and emphasize the need to go beyond diffusion-based theories to describe bubble dynamics in dense fluids.