Observation of bubble dynamics within luminescent cavitation clouds: Sonoluminescence at the nano-scale

Measurements of acoustically driven cavitation luminescence indicate that this phenomenon is robust over a huge parameter space ranging from 10 kHz to >10 MHz. The minimum bubble radius achieved is an upper bound for the size of the light-emitting region and ranges from about 1 microm at 15 kHz to tens of nm at 11 MHz. Although lines can be discerned in the spectra of some cavitation clouds, they sit on top of a broadband continuum which can have greater spectral density in the ultraviolet than is observed for resonantly driven sonoluminescence from a single bubble.