Title: Illuminating Sonoluminescence
Speaker: Professor M. Brenner
Speaker Info: MIT
Brief Description:
Special Note:
Abstract:
Air bubbles forced by a periodic acoustic field can emit picosecond light bursts. Under the correct conditions this configuration remains stable for billions of cycles. Experimental lower bounds on the temperature in the bubble exceed $10^4$ Kelvin. This talk will discuss two sets of ideas we have recently introduced to explain aspects of this phenomenon. The first idea combines notions of hydrodynamic stability with sonochemistry to explain the observed experimental sensitivity on doping with rare gases. The second idea posits that acoustic energy accumulates inside the bubble over long times, and that the light intensity is determined by the stored energy. Comparison with current experiments will be given.Date: Friday, January 31, 1997