Novel Mechanism for Single Bubble Sonoluminescence

Careful re-examination of typical experimental data made it possible to show that the UV continua observed in multi-bubble (MBSL) and single-bubble (SBSL) sonoluminescence spectra have the same physical nature - radiative dissociation of electronically excited hydrogen molecules [and probably hydrides of heavy rare gases like ArH*] due to spontaneous transitions between bound and repulsive electronic states. The proposed mechanism is able to explain all available spectroscopic observations without any exotic hypothesis but in terms usual for plasma spectroscopy.