The Mechanism of Shrimpoluminescence

Abstract

Snapping shrimp produce bubbles that emit light when they collapse. When a bubble collapses so strongly that it emits light, the light emission is usually called sonoluminescence; in the case of the shrimp, it is called "shrimpoluminescence". The bubble collapses so fast that no heat can escape and the gas trapped in the bubble becomes hot enough to ionize. Light is emitted through electron-ion bremsstrahlung, electron-atom bremsstrahlung, and electron-ion recombination. In this paper, we study the dynamics of a sonoluminescing bubble and learn how to calculate the spectrum of emitted light, allowing us to explain the physical mechanisms of shrimpoluminescence.