ASA 126th Meeting Denver 1993 October 4-8

2pPA6. Rectified diffusion and single-bubble sonoluminescence.

Ritva Lofstedt Bradley P. Barber Seth Putterman

Phys. Dept., Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024

The remarkably low solubility of air in water may be essential to the observation of stable single-bubble sonoluminescence (SL) in this system. In other liquids, the mass exchange during a single cycle appears to be sufficient to quench single-bubble SL. To gain insight into this issue, (1) a theory is developed that unifies mass diffusion and the Rayleigh--Plesset equation, and (2) laser scattering is used as a probe of the time change of bubble parameters due to mass diffusion. [Work supported by the U.S. DOE Division of Advanced Energy Projects and Division of Engineering and Geophysics (Theory); R. L. is an AT&T fellow.]