Examination of an analogy toward the understanding of thermal lens oscillations

Abstract

The overstability for surface tension and coupled buoyancy-driven instability in a horizontal liquid layer, with very general conditions, is studied. A linear formulation to compute the critical quantities is established. Numerical results are given and compared with experiments in which a free surface is heated by a controlled hot-wire located near and below it. When correctly presented in terms of well-chosen reduced quantities, theoretical and experimental results agree very well, showing that there is an analogy between the theoretical problem (horizontal liquid layer, basic conductive state) and the experimental situation (hot-wire heating, basic convective state). Disagreements are pointed out to stress the limitations of the analogy. The original motivation of the work is the understanding of thermal lens oscillations produced when heating below the free surface is carried out using a laser beam.