Molecular emission from single-bubble sonoluminescence

Ultrasound can drive a single gas bubble in water into violent oscillation; as the bubble is compressed periodically, extremely short flashes of light (about 100 ps) are generated with clock-like regularity1,2,3,4. This process, known as single-bubble sonoluminescence, gives rise to featureless continuum emission4,5 in water (from 200 to 800 nm, with increasing intensity into the ultraviolet). In contrast, the emission of light from clouds of cavitating bubbles at higher acoustic pressures (multi-bubble sonoluminescence1) is dominated by atomic and molecular excited-state emission6,7,8,9,10,11 at much lower temperatures6. These observations have spurred intense effort to uncover the origin of sonoluminescence and to generalize the conditions necessary for its creation. Here we report a series of polar aprotic liquids that generate very strong single-bubble sonoluminescence, during which emission from molecular excited states is observed. Previously, single-bubble sonoluminescence from liquids other than water has proved extremely elusive12,13. Our results give direct proof of the existence of chemical reactions and the formation of molecular excited states during single-bubble cavitation, and provide a spectroscopic link between single- and multi-bubble sonoluminescence.