Physics Today April 2002

Physics Today April 2002: "To promote fusion, Taleyarkhan and company tried to achieve more extreme bubble conditions than in previous sonoluminescence experiments. First, they used deuterated acetone (C3D6O) so that fusionable fuel was present. To get a very high compression ratio, they used a beam of energetic (14 MeV) neutrons to generate tiny bubbles in their beaker-sized container of superheated deuterated acetone, estimating that the resulting bubbles will have a minimum radius of 10-100 nm. That's five orders of magnitude smaller than the maximum radius the expanded bubble is expected to reach.

To avoid the resistance to collapse that's frequently produced by residual vapors, the experimenters degassed the acetone. Finally, they drove the liquid with a very intense sound field. Team members performed one-dimensional hydrodynamic shock-code calculations for the conditions of their experiment to determine if fusion was possible."