D. Felipe Gaitan
Glynn Holt
Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-2157
Anthony A. Atchley
Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA 93943
Sonoluminescence from a single bubble is produced when a sound field is used to drive a gas bubble at very large amplitudes (maximum radius(approximately equal to)4xequilibrium radius). At its minimum radius, the bubble interior is compressed, raising the gas temperature by as much as 5000 (degrees)K and generating a short pulse of light once every acoustic cycle. This light has been measured to be (less than or equal to)50 ps in duration and repeats every cycle (~30 (mu)s) with a precision of 50 ps or better (Barber et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 91, 3061--3063 (1992)]. Under certain conditions, however, the time interval between pulses becomes at times subharmonic (integer multiple of the driving period), pseudo-periodic (infinite period), or even chaotic (??). In this paper, preliminary measurements of this phenomena will be presented. [Work supported in part by ONR and the NPS Research Program.]