Robert E. Apfel
Tao Shi
Joseph Jankovsky
Jeffrey Ketterling
Xiaohui Chen
Dept. of Mech. Eng., Yale Univ., New Haven, CT 06520-8286
The potential to perform single-bubble sonoluminescence (SBSL) at low
frequencies is motivated by the payoff of greatly enhanced energy concentration
during collapse. Yet it is also known that bubbles undergoing such catastrophic
collapse tend to be unstable. Experimental apparatus has been designed and
computer simulations have been performed to test the feasibility of
low-frequency, single-bubble sonoluminescence. The experimental apparatus
consists of a cylindrical cell that is driven by an aluminum, half-wavelength
resonator with fundamental resonance of less than 15 kHz. The cell is designed
to be pressurized up to 5 atmospheres to allow levitation without significant
spurious cavitation in the liquid. To complement this experimental work, our
computer simulations of this phenomena are continuing [T. Shi and R. Apfel,