Sonoluminescence

F. Ronald Young

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135486020
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Physics
• Index: Physics

While it is still a mystery of how a low-energy-density sound wave can concentrate enough energy in a small enough volume to cause the emission of light, research in acoustic cavitation and sonoluminescence has lead to plausible theories in which the source of light can be experimentally sustained. It has also lead to promising applications, such a

CHAPTER ONE
Introduction

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt

Universes that drift like bubbles in the foam upon the River of Time

Arthur C. Clarke

The Wall of Darkness, in Super Science Stories, collected in The Other Side of the Sky, Signet, New York, 1959, Chap 4

1.1 HOW THE BOOK IS ORGANIZED

We start with the discovery of sonoluminescence in 1933, and then the independent discoveries of single bubble sonoluminescence in 1962 in Japan and in 1970 and 1990 in the USA.

Any treatise on sonoluminescence must be built on bubble dynamics and an account of this is included in Chapter 1. This leads on to the important basic subjects of Bjerknes forces, rectified diffusion, and sound emission from a bubble.

We are now in a position to consider sonoluminescence itself. Chapter 2 deals with multibubble sonoluminescence, and also the light from hydrodynamic cavitation, agitated mercury, and collapsing glass spheres. This is mainly up to 1990.

Chapter 3 describes single bubble sonoluminescence, when from 1990 a whole series of systematic experiments were performed. With a stable single bubble, the gas content of the bubble could be controlled. And with a specified driving frequency and pressure we are well on the way to controlling the bubble parameters. Many research groups investigated how the sonoluminescence depended on these parameters.

Chapter 4 describes the theories of sonoluminescence. Early theories, now largely discontinued, to explain multibubble sonoluminescence, are discussed. With the advent of single bubble sonoluminescence in 1990, theoreticians all over the world have been engaged in explaining where the light comes from. Some of these later ideas are now discounted. There have been over 15 theories of the origin of sonoluminescence put forward. No one theory has yet gained universal acceptance.

Chapter 5 contains some conclusions, uses of sonoluminescence, and suggestions for future work.

1.2 HISTORY OF SONOLUMINESCENCE

When studying the action of ultrasonic waves on the development of a photographic plate it was accidentally discovered by Marinesco and Trillat (1933) that fogging of the photographic plate sometimes occurred. They explained the action as due to the ultrasonic waves accelerating the processes of reduction which take place in the sensitive plate by the violent mixing of the reactants, but Frenzel and Schultes (1934) in Cologne discovered that the fogging was accompanied by a faint luminescence. This light fogged the plate. Chambers (1937) obtained sonoluminescence from 14 liquids using the eye as a detector.

Sonoluminescence is always preceded by cavitation, and can easily be seen by the naked eye in a dark room if glycerine is cavitated by a velocity transformer attached to a 20 W, 20 kHz transducer. It appears as a bluish-white light.

Usually the sonoluminescence is so weak that photomultiplier tubes are used to detect it. This led to the discovery that the light appears as discrete flashes which are periodic with the sound field. Work then proceeded to find out at what phase of the sound field, or volume of the cavitating bubbles, the flashes occurred. The definitive experiment on this was performed by Meyer and Kuttruff (1959). They produced cavitation bubbles on the end face of a nickel rod magnetostrictively excited at 2.5 kHz and obtained a series of photographs showing the life cycle of the cavitation bubbles. The photographs showed that the bubbles started to appear halfway through the sound period, grew to a maximum and collapsed rapidly. The sonoluminescent flash occurred at the end of the collapse.

Günther et al. (1957, 1959) trained a photomultiplier tube on each of the pressure antinodes of a 30 kHz standing wave and found that the sonoluminescence flashes were periodic and occurred shortly before the end of the compression part of the cycle. The frequency of occurrence of these flashes matched the frequency of the sound source.

Negishi (1960, 1961) also showed correspondence of sonoluminescence with the sound pressure cycle.

Leighton et al. (1988) and Hatanaka et al. (1999) showed experimentally that sonoluminescence occurred at the pressure antinodes of a standing-wave sound field in water.

Work proceeded during the next thirty years in determining the dependence of sonoluminescence (SL) on hydrostatic pressure, sound pressure amplitude, frequency of the sound field, temperature of the liquid, nature of the solvent, and the role of the dissolved gas. The spectra of SL was also studied. All these dependencies are described by Young (1989,1999), Finch (1963) and Walton and Reynolds (1984).

In 1962, Yosioka and Omura discovered...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• DEDICATION
• FOREWORD
• PREFACE
• LIST OF SYMBOLS
• USEFUL DIMENSIONLESS PARAMETERS
• NOTE ON UNITS OF VISCOSITY
• NOTE ON UNITS OF PRESSURE
• CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER TWO MULTIBUBBLE SONOLUMINESCENCE
• CHAPTER THREE SINGLE BUBBLE SONOLUMINESCENCE
• CHAPTER FOUR THEORIES OF SONOLUMINESCENCE
• CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSIONS
• APPENDIX