  A physical mechanism has been proposed to describe the formation of a stable
state of a nonwetting liquid after filling of a porous medium at an increased
pressure with the subsequent reduction of the overpressure to zero. It has been
shown that the observed transition of the system of nonwetting-liquid
nanoclusters to the stable state in a narrow range of filling factors and a
narrow temperature interval is due to a decrease in the surface free energy
without change in the chemical potential owing to the collective interactions
between liquid nanoclusters in the neighboring pores. This effectively
corresponds to their mutual attraction. The model makes it possible to describe
the observed dependences of the volume of the liquid in pores in the stable
state on the filling factor and temperature.
