Fig. 1.

Sketch of the bubble pinch-off scenario in a turbulent flow. The initial bubble shape is set by turbulent fluctuations, with the flow field evolving as the bubble deforms. When a neck of millimetric size starts to form, its dynamics speed up, and the neck quickly collapses, leading to the singularity time, $t_0$, at which breakup occurs. The duration of the final pinching process, $t_0-t\lesssim 10$ ms, is shorter than the turbulence fluctuation correlation time at the scale of the neck, $t_{\text{turb}}\sim {ϵ}^{-1/3}{d}_{\tau }^{2/3}\sim$ 15 to 70 ms. As a consequence, the turbulent fluctuations freeze and stay frozen during the subsequent pinch-off process.