Sonoluminescence and circulating light

Abstract

The phenomenon of sonoluminescence is that in ordinary cold water under the action of a spherical standing acoustic wave, a brightly luminous ball with anomalous properties appears in the center of the sphere. The most unusual is the spectrum of its radiation. Estimates based on the spectral analysis show that the temperature of the luminous ball is above a hundred of thousands of degrees. There is no satisfactory explanation for the emergence of such a spectrum. We show that the shift of radiation to the short-wavelength part of the spectrum is explained by the compression of this light with a decrease in the diameter of this ball. The disappearance of the bands in the spectrum is explained by the fact that at each moment of time the observer sees a set of radiations that have arisen at different moments of time and have undergone different degrees of compression. Thus, the observed emission spectrum of the ball corresponds not to the radiation of an absolutely black body heated over a hundred thousand degrees, but to the radiation of the circulating light arising from the adiabatic compression of gases inside the ball. Attempts to use the extremely high temperature inside the ball to carry out a thermonuclear fusion reaction are known. From the above consideration, it can be concluded that such attempts are futile since there is no extremely high temperature inside the ball.