AbstractWe investigate the effect of (interface) surface tensor on the linear Rayleigh–Taylor (RT) instability in stratified incompressible viscous fluids. The existence of linear RT instability solutions with largest growth rate Λ is proved under the instability condition (i.e., the surface tension coefficient ϑ is less than a threshold $\vartheta _{\mathrm{c}}$
ϑ
c
) by the modified variational method of PDEs. Moreover, we find a new upper bound for Λ. In particular, we directly observe from the upper bound that Λ decreasingly converges to zero as ϑ goes from zero to the threshold $\vartheta _{\mathrm{c}}$
ϑ
c
.
A new upper bound for the largest growth rate of linear Rayleigh–Taylor instability