Luminescence from Collapsing Centimeter Bubbles Expanded by Chemical Reaction

We report on a new method for realizing an exceptionally strong inertial confinement of a gas in a liquid: A centimetric spherical bubble filled with a reactive gaseous mixture in a liquid is expanded by an exothermic chemical reaction whose products condense in the liquid at the bubble wall. Hence, the cavity formed in this way is essentially empty as it collapses. The temperatures reached at maximum compression, inferred from the cavity radius dynamics and further confirmed by spectroscopic measurements exceed 20 000 K. Because the cavity is typically big, our findings also provide unique space and time resolved sequences of the events accompanying the collapse, notably the development of the inertial instability notoriously known to deter strong compression.