Cavitation bubble wall pressure measurement by an electromagnetic surface wave enhanced pump-probe configuration

We report on the measurement of the pressure associated with a shock wave within a very thin layer (100 nm) in proximity of a boundarysurface. In the experiments, the shock wave was emitted by a cavitation bubble generated by a pulsed pump laser in water. We developed apump-probe setup based on the detection of the light scattered at the surface of a one-dimensional photonic crystal, which was purposelydesigned to sustain a surface electromagnetic wave in the visible range and to enhance the optical response. In order to better understand thephenomenon, we implemented numerical simulations to describe the light scattering intensity distributions through a modified Rayleigh’smethod. We report, with a LoD of about 0.1 MPa, the measurements of the pressure at a surface in the presence of a laser-induced cavitationbubble generated at different distances from the surface and for different pulse energies.