The role of the electric Bond number in the stability of pasta phases

Abstract

The stability of pasta phases in cylindrical and spherical Wigner-Seitz (W-S) cells is examined. The electric Bond number is introduced as the ratio of electric and surface energies. In the case of a charged rod in vacuum, other kinds of instabilities appear in addition to the well known Plateau- Rayleigh mode. For the case of a rod confined in a W-S cell the variety of unstable modes is reduced. It comes from the virial theorem, which bounds the value of the Bond number from above and reduces the role played by electric forces. A similar analysis is done for the spherical W-S cell, where it appears that the inclusion of the virial theorem stabilizes all of the modes.