Surface tension of small bubbles and droplets and the cavitation threshold

In this paper, using an unified approach, estimates are given of the magnitude of the surface tension of water for planar and curved interfaces in the pairwase interaction approximation based on the Lennard-Jones potential. It is shown that the surface tensions of a bubble and droplet have qualitatively different dependences on the curvature of the surface: for the bubble, as the radius of the surface's curvature decreases, the surface tension decreases, whereas it increases on the droplet. The corresponding values of the Tolman corrections are also determined. In addition, it is shown that the dependence of the surface tension on the surface's curvature is important for evaluating the critical negative pressure for the onset of cavitation.