Experimental study of cavitation development in liquid in pulsed non-uniform electric field under the action of ponderomotive forces

In this paper, the Rayleigh scattering method is used to study the formation of cavitation in water in a pulsed inhomogeneous electric field when a nanosecond high voltage pulse is applied to a needle-like electrode. The observational results confirm the theoretical picture of cavitation development under the action of electrostrictive ponderomotive forces. The values of the negative pressure, the average size of the cavitation nanovoids and their concentration were obtained from these measurements, which are in agreement with theoretical estimates.