Shockwave and cavitation bubble dynamics of atmospheric air

Abstract

The generation and evolution of laser induced shock waves (SWs) and the hot core plasma (HCP) created by focusing 7 ns, 532 nm laser pulses in ambient air is studied using time resolved shadowgraphic imaging technique. The dynamics of rapidly expanding plasma releasing SWs into the ambient atmosphere were studied for time delays ranging from nanoseconds to milliseconds with ns temporal resolution. The SW is observed to get detached from expanding HCP at around 3μs. Though the SWs were found to expand spherically following the Sedov-Taylor theory, the rapidly expanding HCP shows asymmetric expansion during both the expansion and cooling phase similar to that of inertial cavitation bubble (CB) dynamics. The asymmetric expansion of HCP leads to oscillation of the plasma boundary, eventually leading to collapse by forming vortices formed by the interaction of ambient air. © Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2013.