Photoacoustic shock generation in carbon suspensions

This letter discusses photoacoustic shock wave generation and the origin of nonlinear sound wave generation in carbon suspensions. The Burgers equation for an inviscid fluid is solved for an exponential acoustic wave. The solution shows an increasingly steep wave form that gradually coalesces into a shock front. Large dynamic range measurements of photoacoustic waves generated by a pulsed-laser beam in carbon suspensions show the pressure in the wave to depart significantly from the predictions of linear response theory. Acoustic sound speed and amplitude measurements indicate that weak shocks are produced from the photoacoustic sound generation process rather than from nonlinear propagational effects.