Shock formation within sonoluminescence bubbles

Abstract

A strong case has been made by several authors that sharp, spherically symmetric shocks converging on the center of a spherical bubble driven by a strong acoustic field give rise to rapid compression and heating that produces the brief flash of light known as sonoluminescence. The formation of such shocks is considered. It is found that, although at the main collapse the bubble wall does indeed launch an inwardly-traveling compression wave, and although the subsequent reflection of the wave at the bubble center produces a very rapid temperature peak, the wave is prevented from steepening into a sharp shock by an adverse gradient in the sound speed caused by heat transfer. It is shown that the mathematical characteristics of the flow can be prevented from accumulating into a shock front by this adverse sound speed gradient. A range of results is presented for a variety of bubble ambient radii and sound field amplitudes suggested by experiments. The time scale of the peak temperature in the bubble is set by the dynamics of the compression wave: this is typically in the range 100–300 ps (FWHM) in concert with recent measurements of the sonoluminescence pulse width.