Instruct: Identify the main and secondary category of Arxiv papers based on the titles and abstracts
Query: Role of zero point energy in promoting ice formation in a spherical drop
  of water   We demonstrate that the Lifshitz interaction energy (excluding the
self-energies of the inner and outer spherical regions) for three concentric
spherical dielectric media can be evaluated easily using the immense
computation power in recent processors relative to those of a few decades ago.
As a prototype, we compute the Lifshitz interaction energy for a spherical
shell of water immersed in water vapor of infinite extent while enclosing a
spherical ball of ice inside the shell, such that two concentric spherical
interfaces are formed: one between solid ice and liquid water and the other
between liquid water and gaseous vapor. We evaluate the Lifshitz interaction
energy for the above configuration at the triple point of water when the solid,
liquid, and gaseous states of water coexist, and, thus, extend the analysis of
Elbaum and Schick in Phys. Rev. Lett. 66 (1991) 1713 to spherical
configurations. We find that, when the Lifshitz energy contributes dominantly
to the total energy of this system, which is often the case when electrostatic
interactions are absent, a drop of water surrounded by vapor of infinite extent
is not stable at the triple point. This instability, that is a manifestation of
the quantum fluctuations in the medium, will promote formation of ice in water,
which will then grow in size indefinitely. This is a consequence of the finding
here that the Lifshitz energy is minimized for large (micrometer size) radius
of the ice ball and small (nanometer size) thickness of the water shell
surrounding the ice. These results might be relevant to the formation of hail
in thunderclouds. These results are tentative in that the self-energies are
omitted; surface tension and nucleation energy are not considered.

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The categories of this paper are: stat
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The categories of this paper are: alg-geom
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The categories of this paper are: acc-phys
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The categories of this paper are: eess
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The categories of this paper are: dg-ga
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The categories of this paper are: cmp-lg
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The categories of this paper are: q-fin
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The categories of this paper are: patt-sol
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The categories of this paper are: q-alg
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The categories of this paper are: ao-sci
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The categories of this paper are: mtrl-th
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The categories of this paper are: astro-ph
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The categories of this paper are: nucl-ex
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The categories of this paper are: physics
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The categories of this paper are: math-ph
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The categories of this paper are: supr-con