The transduction of sound into light through the implosion of a bubble of gas leads to a flash of light whose duration is delineated in picoseconds. Combined measurements of spectral irradiance, Mie scattering, and flash width (as determined by time-correlated single-photon counting) suggest that sonoluminescence from hydrogen and noble-gas bubbles is radiation from a blackbody with temperatures ranging from 6000 K (H-2) to 20,000 K (He) and a surface of emission whose radius ranges from 0.1 mum (He) to 0.4 mum (Xe). The state of matter that would admit photon-matter equilibrium under such conditions is a mystery. (C) 2001 Optical Society of America. [References: 29]
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