Cavitation luminescence in a water hammer: Upscaling sonoluminescence

Oscillatory acceleration and deceleration of a column of water leads to a pipe hammer as well as cavitation. With a small amount of xenon gas dissolved in the water, we can detect a stream of predominantly ultraviolet subnanosecond flashes of light which are attributed to collapsing bubbles. The observed emission can exceed 10(8) photons for a single collapse and has a peak power over 0.4 W. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.