Explosive vaporization of aerosol drops under irradiation by a CO_2 laser beam

Experimental results on the explosive breakup of water aerosols in response to high-energy CO(2) laser radiation are presented for optical size parameters ranging from 6 to 15. The maximum power density used in this work was ~1.5 MW/cm(2). A pulsed N(2) laser imaging system coupled to a digital image processing system was used to observe visually the behavior of the drops on breakup. A phase/Doppler particle analyzer system was used to determine the simultaneous size and velocity of expelled particles at a distance of 2 mm from the drops. Results indicate that the incident irradiance affects the average size of particles expelled, but the average velocity of the expelled particles is not a strong function of the incident irradiance. Drop explosions resembling jellyfish are reported, we believe, for the first time in this work.