Gas dynamics of mixtures within sonoluminescence bubbles

Abstract

Sonoluminescence experiments are often conducted using mixtures of gases intentionally dissolved in the liquid, and, presumably, resident in the bubble interior. Even when only a single gas is dissolved in the host liquid, vapor is undoubtedly present within the bubble in addition to the intended gas. Hence, all sonoluminescence experiments can be assumed to involve gas mixtures even though the contents of the bubbles cannot be directly assayed. Two constituents of a gas mixture will have differing solubility in the host liquid, which complicates the amount of each species one would expect is resident within a bubble, depending on how the experiment was prepared. Moreover, there is little opportunity for mixing of the bubble contents due to the highly spherically symmetric nature of single-bubble sonoluminescence. Using the methods of computational fluid dynamics, the fate of gas mixtures within a strongly driven bubble is investigated. [Work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.]