Time‐resolved measurements of optical emission from sonoluminescence

The results of detailed measurements of sonoluminescence from a gas bubble that is acoustically driven in deionized water are presented. The pulse width and relative jitter of the optical flash and the minimum and ambient radius of the bubble as a function of the driving pressure, temperature, and gas concentration of the water are measured. The optical flash is collected by an f/1.4 lens, and then optically relayed onto the slit of a Hamamatsu C1587 optical streak camera which records the time evolution of the flash with picosecond resolution. Single event streaks are obtained, showing FWHM pulse widths of 200–400 ps, comparable to recently reported results [Gompf et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 1405 (1997)]. The jitter of the flash between events has been found to be a minimum of ±200 ps. Mie scattering has been used to measure the maximum and ambient bubble radius at the same time for comparison to the model [Moss et al., Science 276, 1398 (1997)]. The consequences of these results on modeling will also b...