Abstract

Acoustic cavitation is important in many technical applications, such as ultrasonic cleaning, sonochemistry, and laser surgery and lithotripsy in medicine.^1-4 Previously, a memory effect for acoustic cavitation, i.e., a reversible decrease of the cavitation threshold due to neutron irradiation, has been observed for highly purified and degassed water.⁵ Its physical mechanism, however, has not been understood. Furthermore, to our knowledge, there has not been any study on a possible memory effect for cavitation at a liquid-solid interface. The previous cavitation studies have been limited to microseconds due to the inability of the transducers to generate shorter acoustic pulses of sufficient intensities.

© 1994 Optical Society of America