A laser probe measurement of cavitation bubble dynamics improved by shock wave detection and compared to shadow photography

High-intensity light from a laser pulse can produce optical breakdown in a liquid, followed by a shock wave and the growth of a cavitation bubble. When the bubble reaches its maximum radius the liquid pressure causes it to collapse, which in turn initiates the growth of another bubble. The oscillations can repeat themselves several times, and a shock wave is emitted after every collapse. In our study the breakdown was induced in distilled water by a Nd:YAG pulsed laser, which was designed for ocular photodisruption. The main focus of our experiments was measurement of the cavitation bubble and the shock waves using an optical probe based on deflections of a laser beam. The applied experimental setup made it possible to carry out one- or two-dimensional scanning of the cavitation bubble based on automatic control of the experiment. Since the beam-deflection probe (BDP) allowed simultaneous measurements of the cavitation bubble and the shock waves, we developed a method for reducing the measurement noise of the BDP scanning. This improvement includes an analysis of the secondary shock waves and leads to a significant reduction in the noise of the measurement. Simultaneous measurements based on shadow photography were used as a comparative method during the experiment.