Sonoluminescence

• For an account at the level of a science graduate please see the article in Physics World on this site.
• For an account at the level of an undergraduate please see the Scientific American article at this site.
• Detailed reviews are Physics Reports, Barber et al march 1997 and Annual Reviews of Fluid Mechanics Putterman and Weninger 2000.

      For history see the above articles and the thesis of Lofstedt UCLA 1995, and a letter to Physics World August 1999 at this site. We believe that the photo of a single light emitting bubble moving in a torus generated the appearance of a shuttlecock as reported in the thesis of Paul R. Temple U. Vermont 1970 who we credit with the first observation of sonoluminescence from a single bubble.

      Latest results include the use of a streak camera to observe the emission of an outgoing shock wave from the sonoluminescing bubble. In a 16KHz sound field the strength of the shock wave approaches 1 Million Atmospheres. Two color plates and a black and white show the experiment and data. Physical Review E 2000.

      Sonoluminescence has found use in synchronizing photodetector arrays for the solar neutrino observatory and in plastic surgery.
see page 468[Liposuction]

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