Bubble dynamics and sonoluminescence from helium or xenon in mercury and water

Abstract

Numerical simulations of bubble pulsation and sonoluminescence (SL) have been performed for helium or xenon bubbles in mercury and water under the experimental conditions of Futakawa et al. [M. Futakawa, T. Naoe, and M. Kawai, in Nonlinear Acoustics-Fundamentals and Applications: 18th International Symposium on Nonlinear Acoustics (ISNA 18), AIP Conf. Proc. No. 1022, edited by B. O. Enflo, C. M. Hedberg, and L. Kari (AIP, New York, 2008), p. 197]. The results of the numerical simulations have revealed that the bubble expansion is much larger in water than in mercury mainly because the density of water is one order of magnitude smaller than that of mercury. The SL intensity is higher in water than that in mercury although the maximum bubble temperature is lower. This is caused by the much larger amount of vapor inside a bubble as the saturated vapor pressure of water is four orders of magnitude larger than that of mercury at room temperature. The SL intensity from xenon is much larger than that from helium due both to lower ionization potential and higher bubble temperature due to lower thermal conductivity. The instantaneous SL power may be as large as 200 W from xenon in water. The maximum temperature inside a xenon bubble in mercury may be as high as about 80 000K. It is suggested that the maximum pressure in mercury due to shock waves emitted from bubbles increases as the SL intensity increases, although they are not simply correlated in water because the amount of water vapor trapped inside a bubble influences the SL intensity in a complex way.