Oscillations PDF

A broad variety of research topics emerged during the past sixty years from
Oscillations, Waves, and Interactions

the institute’s global theme „oscillations and waves“. Some of these to- Thomas Kurz, Ulrich Parlitz, and Udo Kaatze (Eds.)
pics are addressed in this book in which topical review articles by former and
present members of the institute are collected. The subjects covered vary from
speech and hearing research to flow control and active control systems, from
bubble oscillations to cavitation structures, from ordering phenomena in li-
quids and one-dimensional solids to complex dynamics of chaotic nonlinear Sixty Years Drittes Physikalisches Institut
systems, from laser speckle metrology to ring laser gyroscopes, from biophy-
sics to medical applications in ophthalmology as well as extracorporeal shock
A Festschrift
wave lithotripsy.
Thomas Kurz, Ulrich Parlitz, and Udo Kaatze (Eds.)
ISBN-13: 978-3-938616-96-3 Universitätsverlag Göttingen Universitätsverlag Göttingen

Except where otherwise noted, this work is

licensed under a Creative Commons License
erschienen im Universitätsverlag Göttingen 2007
Thomas Kurz, Ulrich Parlitz,
Udo Kaatze (Eds.)
Oscillations, Waves and

Interactions
Sixty Years Drittes

Physikalisches Institut
A Festschrift
Universitätsverlag Göttingen
2007
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Typesetting in LaTeX: Thomas Kurz

Cover Design: Margo Bargheer
Cover image: Institute’s free-space room. A cut-out of this image appeared in the
LIFE International special issue “Germany, a giant awakened”, May 10, 1954.
© 2007 Universitätsverlag Göttingen

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ISBN: 978-3-938616-96-3
Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Applied physics at the “Dritte”

Fruitful interplay of a wide range of interests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
M. R. Schroeder, D. Guicking, and U. Kaatze
Speech research with physical methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

H. W. Strube
On the use of specific signal types in hearing research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

A. Kohlrausch and S. van de Par
Sound absorption, sound amplification,

and flow control in ducts with compliant walls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
D. Ronneberger and M. Jüschke
Active control of sound and vibration

History – Fundamentals – State of the art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
D. Guicking
The single bubble – a hot microlaboratory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

W. Lauterborn, T. Kurz, R. Geisler, D. Kröninger, and D. Schanz
From a single bubble to bubble structures in acoustic cavitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

R. Mettin
Physics of stone fragmentation and new concept

of wide-focus and low-pressure extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy . . . . . . . . . . 199
W. Eisenmenger and U. Kaatze
Phase transitions, material ejection, and plume dynamics

in pulsed laser ablation of soft biological tissues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
A. Vogel, I. Apitz, and V. Venugopalan
iv Contents
Laser speckle metrology – a tool

serving the conservation of cultural heritage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
K. D. Hinsch
High-resolution Sagnac interferometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

K. U. Schreiber
Charge-ordering phenomena in one-dimensional solids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

M. Dressel
Multistep association of cations and anions.

The Eigen-Tamm mechanism some decades later . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
R. Pottel, J. Haller, and U. Kaatze
Liquids: Formation of complexes and complex dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367

U. Kaatze and R. Behrends
Complex dynamics of nonlinear systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405

U. Parlitz
DPI60plus – a future with biophysics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435

S. Lakämper and C. F. Schmidt
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
Preface
This year we celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the Dritte Physikalische Institut.
Professor Erwin Meyer, the first director, soon after the foundation formed the insti-
tute’s own style. He established various groups which, headed by a senior scientist,
dealt with quite different fields of research. Based on an atmosphere of academic
freedom and confidence these groups did not just complement one another. Mutual
support with equipment and financial assistance among the groups went without
saying.
This spirit has been perpetuated by Erwin Meyers former students, in particular by
his successors Manfred R. Schroeder and Werner Lauterborn, but also by Reinhard
Pottel, Hans-Wilhelm Helberg, Dirk Ronneberger, and Dieter Guicking, who spent
their academic career in the institute. It has promoted a broad spectrum of research
topics which were and still are conjointly treated, bond by the concerted theme
“oscillations and waves”.
In this book some review articles by former and present members of the Dritte are
combined, indicating the broadness of the research interests which developed from
this theme. Unfortunately, such collection of articles allows only for a limited access
to the broad variety of different fields of interest that have been dealt with in the
past. The reviews are, therefore, complemented by a short overview which, again,
cannot show all aspects of successful work during the sixty years of existence of the
institute. Also, a short outlook is given at the end of the book on future research
objectives in complex systems and biophysics.
We would like to thank all colleagues who established by their activity to the
reputation of the institute and who thus rendered this book possible. We thank the
technicians who by their skilful constructions of new apparatus enabled many new and
more precise methods of measurements, and we thank the tracer, photographer, and
administration secretaries for their continual support. We are particularly indebted
to the authors who spent much time to contribute to this book.
Göttingen, September 2007
Thomas Kurz
Ulrich Parlitz
Udo Kaatze
Oscillations, Waves and Interactions, pp. 1–24
edited by T. Kurz, U. Parlitz, and U. Kaatze
Universitätsverlag Göttingen (2007) ISBN 978–3–938616–96–3
urn:nbn:de:gbv:7-verlag-1-01-8
Applied physics at the “Dritte”

Fruitful interplay of a wide range of interests
Manfred R. Schroeder, Dieter Guicking, and Udo Kaatze
Drittes Physikalisches Institut, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen,
Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
1 Historical antecedents
At the end of the 19th century the well-known Göttingen mathematician Felix Klein
proposed to promote the pursuit of applied sciences at German universities. He
was encouraged in this effort by a visit to the 1893 Chicago World Exhibition –
as an official representative of Kaiser Wilhelm II – and subsequent visits to several
American universities, which had a strong tradition of fostering applied sciences and
engineering. But Klein’s attempt to enlist the Technische Hochschule Hannover – let
alone any university – in his endeavour failed miserably. In 1898 he succeeded, with
support by German industry (Böttinger), to establish an Institut für Angewandte
Elektrizität and an Institut für Angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik at Göttingen,
Institut für Angewandte Elektrizität – the “Red House” on Bunsenstraße.

2 M. R. Schroeder, D. Guicking and U. Kaatze
The institute in the 1950s – the “White House” on Bürgerstraße, the former
Institut für Angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik.
the latter became home to such famous aero-dynamicists as Ludwig Prandtl and
Theodor von Kármán.
In May 1947 these institutes morphed into the Dritte Physikalische Institut under
the leadership of Erwin Meyer, who had been professor at the Technische Hochschule
Berlin-Charlottenburg and, at the same time, head of the acoustics and mechanics
department at the Heinrich-Hertz-Institut, Berlin. With Meyer, room acoustics,
including concert hall acoustics, underwater sound, and acoustics in general, as well
as microwaves came to Göttingen.
2 Room acoustics
Göttingen distinguished itself not only in fundamental research in room acoustics,

but also by practical applications and acoustic consulting. The Institut became soon
well-known through several successful large projects: the Beethovenhalle in Bonn [1],
the Liederhalle [2] and the plenary hall of the Baden-Württemberg parliament in
Stuttgart [3], and the Jahrhunderthalle in Höchst [4]. Especially noteworthy was the
ingenious utilisation of electro-acoustic means utilising the Haas-Effekt.
In fact, the Institut became well known internationally by the discovery, stimu-
lated by Meyer, of the Haas-Effekt by Helmut Haas in 1951 [5]. This property of
human auditory perception says that even an amplified – but suitably delayed –
sound will not affect the perceived direction of the sound source. The name Haas
effect was suggested by Richard Bolt of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It
soon became the basis of electro-acoustic installations using “Leisesprecheranlagen”
(gentle-speaker facilities) [6].
Applied physics at the “Dritte” 3
“Free-space” room with Frieder Eggers (cello), Wolfgang Westphal (flute)

and Heiner Kuttruff (violin).
Reverberation room.
Sound diffusion in small and large rooms, radio studios as well as concert halls, was
investigated by Rolf Thiele, whose results were made visible by a “Schalligel” (“sound
hedgehog”) giving the different sound intensities in different spatial directions [7].
Meyer and Thiele also introduced the concept of “Deutlichkeit” (definition), the
sound energy in the first 50 milliseconds of the impulse response [8].
In general, there was a world-wide interest to supplement reverberation time by
other physical parameters to characterise the acoustic quality of performance spaces.
One of these criteria, favoured in the early 1950s, was the so-called “frequency-
irregularity” of the sound transmission between source (on the stage) and a listener’s
ears. Experimental results obtained by Heinrich Kuttruff and Rolf Thiele [9] in the
Herkulessaal in Munich (and other concert halls) showed that the number of max-
ima of the frequency response did not correspond to the number of normal modes
(resonances) – as posited by a faulty theory by Bolt – but was actually more than a
thousand times less. This astonishing result was explained by a statistical theory by
Manfred Schroeder, then a post-doc at the institute [10]. This theory showed that
the frequency response (sound pressure and phase as functions of frequency) is, ap-
proximately, a complex Gaussian process. As a result, the average distance between
maxima above a critical frequency (“Schroeder frequency”) is fully determined by
the (reciprocal) reverberation time – thus not affording the much sought-after new
quality parameter.
Beside measurements in actual rooms, scale models were also studied. Following
Meyer’s inclination to consider sound waves and electromagnetic waves simultane-
ously, microwave models were also included. Schroeder could show that the dis-
tribution of the frequencies and excitations of the normal electromagnetic modes
in metallic cavities were highly irregular – even for very small deviations from the
symmetry of a perfectly rectangular space, such as a cube [11]. Thus, for all prac-
tical purposes in room acoustics, the normal modes (resonances) can be considered
completely random.
Fundamental investigations, such as on the perception of “echoes”, were also con-
ducted. For this purpose, the attic of the “white house” on Bürgerstraße was con-
verted into a makeshift “anechoic” space. Later a large Reflexionsfreier Raum (“free-
space room”) was constructed, which – unique in the world – was also designed to be
nearly free from reflections for microwaves to facilitate free-space measurements with
electromagnetic waves [12]. Also a large reverberation room (“Hallraum”) was built
which, again, was reverberant for both sound waves and electromagnetic waves [13].
In 1963, Meyer and Kuttruff studied the reflective properties of the ceiling of
Philharmonic Hall in New York by means of a scale model leading to an explanation
of the observed low-frequency deficiency in the actual hall [14]. In the early 1970s, in
a large study of concert hall quality, Dieter Gottlob, Manfred Schroeder, and Karl-
Friedrich Siebrasse – on the basis of measurements in 22 concert halls in Europe –
showed that the lack of early lateral reflections in many modern halls with low ceilings
and wide (fan-shaped) ground plan was the main culprit [15]. To counteract this
deficiency, Schroeder conceived, after 1975, sound-diffusing structures (“reflection
phase gratings”) based on number-theoretic principles [16], which have found broad
acceptance in room acoustics. At the same time, Schroeder proposed a new method of
accurately measuring reverberation times by “backward integration” of the (squared)
impulse response of a room using so-called maximum-length sequences constructed

from the theory of finite number fields [17].
The room-acoustic tradition of the institute lives on in the acoustic consultancies
of former students (Akustikbüro Göttingen).
3 Speech and hearing
When Manfred Schroeder, who had worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories since
1954, succeeded Erwin Meyer as director, some of the speech research pursued at Bell
was transplanted to Göttingen in 1969. Much of the speech research at Göttingen
involved the application of measuring methods from physics to the human speaking
process. The work included speech synthesis [18,19], prosody [20], speech and speaker
recognition [21,22], speaker-specific vocal-tract parameters [23] and used advanced
mathematical methods, such as neural networks and hidden-Markov processes.
Impedance measurement of the lips and the glottis [24] were performed. Another
goal was the deduction of the area function and of articulatory parameters from
acoustic data, such as the speech signal [25,26], from lip photography and X-rays.
The cross-fertilisation between speech and hearing research is exemplified by the
investigation of the cocktail-party processors by H. W. Strube et al. [27]. Also modula-
tion-frequency filtering was applied [28]. For fundamental reasons, and in view of the
importance of human hearing for the proper encoding of speech and music signals,
extensive studies of perceptual masking of one sound by another were undertaken [29].
This research was led by Birger Kollmeier and Armin Kohlrausch. A considerable
amount of the work was concerned with the design of better hearing aids [30] and
tests of speech intelligibility for hearing-impaired listeners.
The work on speech compression was based on linear predictive coding (LPC). In
1976, Atal, Hall and Schroeder introduced “perceptual coding” to acoustic signals
resulting in high-quality speech at very low bit-rates, essential for cell phones and
Internet applications.
Some of the ongoing work in speech is aimed at improving diagnostic tools for
voice pathologies (in collaboration with professor E. Kruse, see the contribution in
this book [31]). Hearing research is still a field of interest of B. Kollmeier at the
University of Oldenburg and A. Kohlrausch at Philips Research, Eindhoven [32].
4 Noise control
In the early 1980s, research projects on active impedance control were started with
controllers in analog electronics, both for air-borne sound and structural vibrations
[33,34]. Besides several smaller projects, active broadband noise control in cars was
investigated in collaboration with an automobile manufacturer, applying adaptive
digital feedforward control with fast algorithms to cope with nonstationary tyre
rolling noise, and with varying acoustic transfer functions [35]. As a demonstration
object, low-frequency fan noise of a kitchen exhaust was cancelled successfully [36];
a presentation at the Hanover fair 1995 found vivid interest. A major research field
was the improvement of adaptive filter algorithms with fast convergence, yet low
numerical complexity [37,38].
These activities ended with the retirement of Dieter Guicking (1998); some more
projects on active flow control and related problems were performed in the working
group of Dirk Ronneberger, see Section 5 and his contribution to this book [39]. For
more details on the historical development, fundamentals, and the state of the art of
active sound and vibration control see the article by D. Guicking [40] in this book.
5 Flow acoustics and flow control
Sound propagation through ducts is influenced by superimposed fluid flow. These

interactions have been studied at the institute theoretically and experimentally in
research groups headed by Fridolin Mechel (1960–1966) and thereafter by Dirk Ron-
neberger until to his retirement 2006. Experimental facilities comprised wind tunnels
and ducts with recirculating water or oil flow, the latter because of the thicker bound-
ary layer. In the wind tunnels, the interaction of sound propagation and mean flow
was studied under various aspects: in ducts with absorbing lining without and with
absorber cassetting [41], in rigid-walled ducts with turbulent air flow [42], also under
the influence of wall roughness [43]. Much work was devoted to the investigation of
cross-sectional discontinuities [44], acoustical [45] and vibrational [46] control of the
boundary layer, the acoustic impedance of an orifice in the flow duct [47] or at the side
wall [48], the directivity of sound radiation from the duct end [49], and the influence
of nonlinear interaction of instability waves in a turbulent jet [50].
In the 1980s, intensive experiments were performed on the noise radiation of rolling
automobile tyres and have contributed to a better understanding of the noise gener-
ation mechanisms [51].
Since the late 1990s, the focus was shifted to active control of flow parameters,
both in air and water [52–56]. Some recent research results are presented at another
place in this book [39].
6 Underwater sound
Erwin Meyer and his team had done intensive research work on water-borne sound
until 1945 at the Heinrich-Hertz-Institut in Berlin. They studied the mechanisms
of sound absorption in sea water, and they developed new absorbers of underwa-
ter sound: rib-type absorbers for the lining of anechoic water basins, and thin-layer
two-circuit resonance absorbers as reflection reducing coatings for underwater ob-
jects. The research results, which could not be published during war time, have been
collected in a US Navy Report [57] which today is still recognised as a treasure of
information for researchers in this field all over the world.
Meyer and his team continued the hydroacoustic research at Göttingen with fi-
nancial support by the British “Department of Scientific and Industrial Research”
(DSIR), later by the “Department of Naval Physical Research” (DNPR). The research
contract started in 1948 and was continued year after year for a record breaking pe-
riod of time until 1978, long after Erwin Meyer’s death.
Anechoic water tank lined with rip-type absorbers.

Sound absorption and sound velocity in water, aqueous solutions of electrolytes,

and other liquids were studied in wide frequency and temperature ranges (see Sec-
tion 10). Also, the influence of gas bubbles on the acoustic properties of liquids
was investigated [58,59], further leading to intensive research on single bubble oscil-
lations, cavitation, and luminescence (see Section 7 of this article and the pertinent
contributions to this book [60,61]).
Erwin Meyer was always interested in the improvement of measurement techniques,
also in the field of underwater sound. In close analogy to the anechoic chambers for
air-borne sound, for which Meyer had invented the lining by wedges of sound ab-
sorbing porous material [62], previous experiments [63] eventually culminated in the
installation of a 100-m3 water tank with rib-type absorbers [64], providing near free-
field conditions from 7 kHz through 70 kHz. Less costly impedance measurements
in resiliently lined water-filled tubes [65] and sound absorption or sound power mea-
surements in a resiliently lined reverberation tank [66] were also performed. As an
interesting result it was shown that the edge effect is much stronger for absorbers
on sound-soft than on rigid walls [67]. Impedance measurements at low frequencies
were performed with thick-walled “pressure chambers” [68]. A shallow water basin
with sound-soft bottom and absorbing perimeter allowed studies of two-dimensional
sound fields [69].
The scattering of underwater sound was investigated in our institute for more
than 30 years, starting 1965 with sound-soft objects [70], and since 1989 resonance
scattering with possible application to the detection and classification of objects
buried in marine sediments [71]. Motivated by analogous microwave systems, Peter
Wille constructed a slim directional hydrophone with low flow resistance (in analogy
to the microwave “rod radiator”) [72], and an aspect-independent sonar reflector,
based on inhomogeneous lenses [73].
Upon Erwin Meyer’s initiative, the international Journal Acustica was founded
in Rome 1950, to succeed the German Akustische Zeitschrift (1936–1944). Since
much unpublished work had accumulated in the meantime, the editors of Acustica
published Akustische Beihefte as supplements in which these papers were collected,
presenting, among others, the major results of the war-time work of Meyer’s group
on hydroacoustics. One such paper [74] describes the thin-layer two-circuit resonance
absorbers – combinations of a parallel and a series resonance circuit – originally made
of rubber with air holes in a central layer. With the availability of a great variety
of modern high polymers, it was attempted to improve the resonance absorbers by
searching for better suited materials. Since a material with a high loss factor of the
bulk modulus could not be found, polymers with lossy Young’s and shear moduli
were applied [75,76]. It was, however, soon recognised that the desired high loss
factor was inevitably related to a strong frequency and temperature dispersion of the
modulus because they are coupled by the Kramers-Kronig relations (e. g., [77]), which
made practical applications unrealistic. As an alternative, the absorption of sound by
constrained liquid flow was investigated, and various structures were designed [78,79].
With electrorheological fluids (ERF), absorbers have been developed the properties
of which can be electrically adjusted to account for a changing environment such as
hydrostatic pressure (i. e., depth of water) or temperature [80].
Inspired by the success of these absorbers, a two-circuit resonance absorber of
Drittes Physikalisches Institut at the turn of the millenium.
airborne sound was constructed for its potential to attenuate the rolling noise of
tyres, covering the relevant frequency range from 700 Hz through 1300 Hz [81].
Some basic research was done on the question “How does the sound get out of a
ship into the water”. Experiments and analytical models of sound radiation from flat
plates [82] were followed by investigations with thick-walled cylindrical shells. The
calculation of their resonance frequencies (at which the sound radiation is maximum)
is all but trivial – the rigorous theory demands for the solution of partial differential
equations of 10th order [83]. Attempts to find simpler calculations resulted in a
surprisingly good approximation [84], reducing the computational effort to solving a
third-order algebraic equation. Comparison with experimental data revealed errors
of a few percent only. As an aside, the critical frequency of flat plates turned out to
be strongly dependent on the density of the surrounding medium [85].
The activities on underwater sound research, except for cavitation, ended with the
retirement of Dieter Guicking who has supervised much of the work summarised here
since about 1970.
7 Cavitation
From the very beginning cavitation was among the areas of research of the Dritte
Physikalische Institut. In fact, already in Berlin Meyer and Tamm had been con-
cerned with vibrations of bubbles in liquids [86]. Methods to study cavitation phe-
nomena using ultrasound were immediately developed in Göttingen [87]. A cinemato-

graph was constructed that allowed for picture sequences of oscillating bubbles at a
picture repetition rate up to 65 000 per second [88]. Soon interest was directed to-
wards nonlinear vibration characteristics of bubbles in water [89] and, in a series of
papers [90–92], the occurrence of sonoluminescence in the sonically induced bubbles
was reported.
Lauterborn generated cavitation bubbles by focusing giant pulses from a ruby laser
into liquids [93]. He investigated the bubble dynamics by high-speed cinematography
with picture repetition rates up to 900 000 per second [94]. For his fundamental con-
tributions to the field he was awarded the Physikpreis of the Deutsche Physikalische
Gesellschaft (German Physical Society) in 1976.
Since then many aspects of cavitation are being investigated by Lauterborn and
his group. Bubble dynamics was studied experimentally and theoretically [60,61,
95]. Much emphasis was placed on the spatial distribution of bubbles in cavitation
structures and on the collective phenomena of bubble clusters. The chaotic behaviour
of bubbles as reflected in the properties of sound waves radiated from cavitation
structures opened new vistas in nonlinear acoustics of fluids [96] and added a new
experimental branch to nonlinear physics [97,98]. It had a considerable influence on
various of the institute’s areas of research [99] (see section 9 of this article). The
fascinating features of sonoluminescence have been an enduring topic of interest [100,
101]. Also neutrons in close temporal proximity to cavitation luminescence were
searched for [102].
An appealing characteristic of the field is the combination of basic research with a
multitude of applications. Biologically and medically related applications are briefly
mentioned in section 13 on “Biophysics”. Some are described in greater detail in
other contributions to this book [103,104]. Use of high power ultrasound in chemical
processing and cleaning is also based on energy concentration by bubble collapse [105,
106].
8 Optics and Holography
Common photographic techniques and high-speed cinematography are rather limited

when three-dimensional bubble clusters are to be recorded. Superior images of cav-
itation structures were obtained using holography [107]. Shortly after the invention
of the laser, this method to store three-dimensional images became very popular
worldwide. At the institute holography was not just used for imaging but also for
generation of cavitation bubble systems [108].
Werner Lauterborn and Karl Joachim Ebeling took a big step forward by conceiv-
ing high-speed holocinematography [109,110]. Spatial and spatial-frequency multi-
plexing techniques were applied to achieve image separation during the reconstruc-
tion process. Acousto-optic modulators [110,111] were employed as beam splitters
and deflectors. Up to eight holograms were successively recorded at a maximum
frame rate 20 000 s−1 to show the interactions of laser-produced bubbles. Combining
rotation of the holographic plate and acousto-optic beam deflection, the capability
of high-speed holocinematography was extended to record up to 4,000 holograms
of rapidly changing deep objects with frame rates up to 300 000 s−1 , corresponding
to a 3-µs time interval between two pictures [112,113]. Such advanced holographic
methods were used to investigate time-dependent cavitation phenomena, such as
period-doubled and chaotic bubble oscillations [114].
9 Nonlinear dynamics
Much of classical physics is based on linear laws. But in recent decades nonlinearity
has come to the fore. With Werner Lauterborn and his coworkers nonlinear dynamics
has been added to the research repertoire at the Dritte Physikalische Institut [98,115].
In particular Lauterborn studied the nonlinear oscillations of cavitation gas bub-
bles in liquids which show nonlinear resonances [116], period-doubling bifurcations,
and chaotic dynamics [117,118]. Soon thereafter the Lauterborn group investigated
chaotic dynamics and bifurcations in periodically excited nonlinear oscillators [119–
121] and coupled oscillators [122,123]. Later Lauterborn and others shed light on the
nonlinear dynamics of lasers [124–126] and nonlinear waves and solitons [127,128]. In
seperate investigations, Parlitz and colleagues studied the synchronisation properties
of chaotic systems, methods for time series analyses and predictions, and also control
of chaos. Part of these investigations is described in more detail in the article by
Ulrich Parlitz [99] of this book.
10 Complex liquids
In the years before the invention of the laser in 1960, microwaves were used in demon-
stration experiments [129] requiring coherent electromagnetic signals, and in diffrac-
tion studies [130,131]. At that time much work was devoted to the development
of microwave techniques, including transmission lines [132], antennas [133], and ab-
sorbers [134–137]. This applied research soon induced interest in the principles of
molecular systems. Electromagnetic waves were used to investigate aspects of ferro-
electricity [132,138–141] and ferromagnetism [142,143] and to perform dielectric stud-
ies of the molecular behaviour of liquids [144]. The application to molecular physics
was greatly facilitated by an extensive collection of radio frequency and microwave
devices at the institute and, thanks to the excellent support by the electronics and
precision engineering workshops, the Dritte became soon well known for its sophis-
ticated broadband measuring methods in liquid research. Later ultrasonic attenu-
ation spectrometry was extended to cover a very broad frequency range [145–147].
Additional methods, such as shear wave spectrometry [148] and dynamic light scat-
tering [149] were also used.
Peter Debye, professor for theoretical and experimental physics at Göttingen from
1914 to 1920, was the first to illuminate the molecular aspects of the interactions
of electromagnetic waves with materials. A significant step towards dielectric spec-
troscopy of liquids was Reinhard Pottel’s broadband study of 2:2 valent electrolyte
solutions in which he verified the existence of dipolar ion complex structures [150],
as had been suggested by Günter Kurtze, Konrad Tamm and Manfred Eigen on the
basis of ultrasonic spectroscopy [146,151,152].
Lectures in all fields of vibrations and waves, usually supplemented by

experiments, have been a continual element of academic life at the “Dritte”.
Pottel’s idea lead to more than forty years of research into the molecular behaviour
of liquids [146,147]. Although other aspects, such as the dielectric [153,154] and ul-
trasonic [155] relaxations of non-dipolar liquids, were also considered, attention was
predominantly directed towards hydrogen network fluctuations, self-associations, and
conformational variations in associating systems. Because of its omnipresence on our
planet, special attention was given to water in its different states of interaction.
More recently, critical phenomena and their crossover to the noncritical dynamics of
demixing binary and ternary liquids were (and still are) the focus of interest. Some
aspects are summarised in contributions to this book [146,147].
11 Hypersonic spectroscopy of solids
The discovery of surface excitation and detection by Baransky and by Bömmel and
Dransfeld in the late 1950s opened up new vistas for high-frequency ultrasonic in-
vestigations of materials. Klaus Gottfried Plaß took the opportunity to develop
an ultrasonic spectrometer for liquid attenuation measurements up to GHz frequen-
cies [145]. Wolfgang Eisenmenger and his group performed a comprehensive investi-
gation of the hypersonic attenuation in cylindrical quartz rods up to 10 GHz [156].
Measurements at temperatures between 4 K and 273 K involved a helium liquefier
which subsequently was used in various low temperature investigations.
A breakthrough in phonon spectroscopy was reached by Eisenmenger during a stay
at Bell Telephone Laboratories in the summer 1966. Together with A. H. Dayem
he succeeded in quantum generation and detection of incoherent phonons, using
superconducting tunnel diodes [157,158]. Hypersonic measurements at frequencies
between 1 GHz and 1 THz were made possible by this pioneering work.
12 Organic conductors and deformed semiconductors
The transition from more applied research in radio-frequency and microwave tech-
niques to applications of such techniques in basic research also happened by the
orientation towards organic conductors. Interest in these materials springs from
their molecular structure which promotes electrical conductivity in one direction.
This confinement to quasi-one-dimensional behaviour opens insights in interesting
phenomena which do not exist or can hardly be studied in three dimensions [159].
Additionally, one-dimensional conductors are considered potential materials for ap-
plications.
Hans-Wilhelm Helberg and his group investigated a multitude of organic con-
ductors, semiconductors, and superconductors, comprising polymers, charge transfer
complexes, and doped materials [160–164]. DC and microwave conductivity as well
as electric permittivity measurements were performed in wide ranges of frequency
(0.5 to 60 GHz) and temperature (1.7 to 700 K) in order to elucidate the mechanisms
of electronic excitation and conductivity. Intra- and intermolecular excitations have
been considered using polarisation microscope techniques in the visible and near in-
frared spectral ranges to determine the indicatrix orientation and the directions of
optical absorption. One-dimensional solids are further on studied by Martin Dressel,
a former student of the Helberg group, at the University of Stuttgart [159].
13 Biophysics
Biologically inspired or medically motivated topics were considered by several groups

of the institute. Molecular aspects apply to head group reorientations of zwitterions,
hydrocarbon chain isomerisations, domain structure fluctuations and defect forma-
tions in lipid membranes [165–167] as well as to the molecular dynamics and confor-
mational kinetics of carbohydrates in solution [168,169]. Some of these investigations
benefited much from close cooperation with colleagues at the Max-Planck-Institut
für Biophysikalische Chemie [170–174].
A quite different approach to biophysics was the treatment of nonlinear differential
equations to gain a better understanding of the biological clock [175]. The numerical
solution of the homogeneous and inhomogeneous van der Pol equation was aimed
at entrainment-synchronization phenomena of a self-excited oscillator by an external
one.
Increasing demands in the monitoring of organ properties during ischemia sparked
interest in the non-invasive dielectric spectroscopy of organ tissue [176] and in the
modelling of the electrical impedance of cellular media [177].
In the 1980s use of focused pulses from a neodynium:YAG laser enabled non-
invasive intraocular surgery by photodisruption. This new instrument called for a
careful investigation of acoustical transients and cavitation bubbles by laser-induced
breakdown in liquids on conditions relevant to ophthalmologic applications [178,179].
Lithotripter shock waves cause cavitation inside the human body. The action of
cavitation bubbles leads to tissue damage as side effect of narrow-focus extracorporal
shock wave lithotripsy [103]. Shock waves and ultrasound may also enhance the
transient permeability of cell membranes and may facilitate drug delivery without
permanent damage to the cell, a process called sonoporation. Molecular uptake

is a precondition for many biological and medical applications. In order to gain
deeper insights in both mechanisms, tissue injury and sonoporation, the interactions
of cavitation bubbles with cells and boundaries have been studied [180,181].
The need for an objective assessment of voice quality after curative minimal-
invasive laser resection of laryngeal carcinomas led to an intensive cooperation with
the department of phoniatrics and pedriatric audiology of our university [182,183].
Acoustical analyses for the description of pathologic voices and for the documenta-
tion of progress in voice rehabilitation measures were developed [31].
In 2000 a biophysics group was established at the Dritte. Headed by Manfred
Radmacher this group was concerned with mechanical properties of biomaterial and
imaging of biological samples using atomic force microscopy [184,185].
In 2006 Christoph Schmidt was appointed professor for biophysics at the insti-
tute. The general theme relating his research projects is the study of dynamic
physical properties of complex biological macromolecules and their assemblies up
to the level of cells [186–188]. These projects involve a) biological motor proteins
in single-molecule experiments with the goal of understanding the physical princi-
ples of biological force generation in a multitude of active transport processes, b)
the dynamics of DNA enzymes in order to understand the still incompletely known
highly complex mechanical tasks in replication, transcription and packing, and c)
the collective dynamics of systems ranging from synthetic colloids to whole cells. In
particular, networks of semiflexible proteins are studied, in vitro and also in living
cells, with so-called microrheology techniques in order to understand the functional
principles of the cytoskeleton, which play crucial roles in processes such as cell di-
vision, cell locomotion, or cell growth, as well as mechano-sensing and signalling.
Future work is indicated in the article by Christoph Schmidt and Stefan Lakämper
in this book [189].
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[105] W. Lauterborn, R. Mettin, C. Jung, and R. Sobotta, ‘Steuerbare Ultraschallreini-
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[106] R. Mettin, J. Appel, D. Krefting, R. Geisler, P. Koch, and W. Lauterborn, ‘Bubble
structures in acoustic cavitation: observation and modelling of a “jellyfish”-streamer’,
in Special Issue of the Revista de Acustica (Forum Acusticum Sevillia, Sevillia, Spain,
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[107] W. Lauterborn, K. Hinsch, and F. Bader, ‘Holography of Bubbles in Water as a
Method to Study Cavitation Bubble Dynamics’, Acustica 26, 170 (1972).
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1980).
[109] K. J. Ebeling and W. Lauterborn, ‘High Speed Holocinematography Using Spatial
Multiplexing for Image Separation’, Optics Communications 21, 67 (1977).
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Photograph “Free-space” room: LIFE, International Edition, May 31, 1954.

Photographs and image processing: Gisa Kirschmann-Schröder
Speech research with physical methods

Hans Werner Strube
Drittes Physikalisches Institut, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Abstract. An overview of some recent work in speech research at the Dritte Physikalische
Institut is given, especially of investigations from a cooperation between physics and pho-
niatrics that concern the analysis of pathologic voices by acoustic and optical means. The
main novel points are the extension of our own previously published acoustic methods to
running speech and new high-speed video methods.
1 Overview
Recent work at the Dritte Physikalische Institut may be divided in two thematic
fields:
• Work related to speech recognition.
• Acoustic analysis of pathologic voices, extended to running speech.
Here only the second thematic field, which was carried out as a cooperative project
of Prof. Eberhard Kruse (Department of Phoniatrics and Paedaudiology, University
of Göttingen) and our group, will be described in more detail.
2 Work related to speech recognition
This research concerned, on one hand, methods appropriate for preprocessing in

speech recognition, such as novel approaches to noise reduction, employing filtering
in the modulation-frequency domain [1,2], and to speaker normalization, starting
from acoustic estimation of speaker-specific measures of the vocal tract [3]. On the
other hand, there were recent investigations concerning speech recognition itself: first,
Hidden Markov Model (HMM) based recognition for “endless” signals with continu-
ous forming of hypothesis graphs [4,5] and noise-robust speech/nonspeech distinction
based on modulation filtering [6] (partially carried out at DaimlerChrysler); second,
exploitation of prosodic features (measures of pitch and loudness) to improve seman-
tic recognition in the context of a natural speech dialog platform [7,8] (partially done
at Bosch GmbH).
26 H. W. Strube
3 Acoustic analysis of pathologic voices, extended to running speech1
3.1 Introduction
For diagnostics and treatment of voice disorders the evaluation of voice quality is
essential. Apart from the auditive judgment by the phoniatrist, it is desirable to find
objective criteria for the rating of voice disorders, especially, to determine physical
quantities appropriate for diagnostic description and classification of speech patholo-
gies. For this purpose, acoustic analysis methods have been developed. Starting
from known quantities, such as jitter, shimmer, and measures of additive noise, novel
quantities were investigated that allow a better separation of noise from glottal pe-
riodicity disturbances. According to clinical usage, first stationary vowels were con-
sidered. But an analysis of running speech is also desirable, in order to assess the
voice under more realistic conditions. So an important goal of the project was the
extension of the methods to running speech.
Further, in phoniatric diagnostics stroboscopic video recordings of the vibrating
glottis are usual. These were supplemented by high-speed recordings, and automatic
methods of image segmentation were developed (e. g., determination of the glottal
opening area). Besides all this, an extensive data bank with acoustic and optical
recordings as well as diagnostic findings was built up.
3.2 Equipment and data bank

For recording and processing, standard PCs were used with good sound cards (e. g.,
Soundblaster PCI 128) under Linux in an ethernet LAN. The voice recordings were
done in an anechoic and insulated recording room, not containing any noisy devices.
The microphone, a Beyerdynamic HEM 191.15 with spherical characteristic, was
head-fixed about 10 cm in front of the chin. A special graphic interface for recording,
cutting and marking of the voice recordings was programmed.
Presently there are about 77000 voice recordings as WAV files with 48 kHz sam-
pling frequency: vowels [ε: a: e: i: o: u:] with pitches normal, low, high; running
speech (phonetically balanced standard texts “Nordwind und Sonne” [north wind
and sun] and “Buttergeschichte” [butter story]); spontaneous speech. For archiving
and automatic administration of the voice and video recordings as well as the medical
diagnoses (about 70 different ones), a large MySQL data base was built up. It runs
with a PHP web frontend on a Linux PC, is connected to the patient information
system SAP of the university hospital and has an interface to the video stroboscopy
workplaces. For each patient-related voice analysis, a PDF file with color print can
be generated.
3.3 The Göttinger Hoarseness Diagram

Especially fruitful was the voice characterization by the “Göttinger Hoarseness Di-
agram” (GHD) [11–14], Fig. 1. It is based on traditionally important quantities in
phoniatric diagnostics: on one hand, irregularity measures of glottal oscillation, such
1
extended and updated from earlier German papers [9,10]
Speech research 27
5
cancer groups
whispering (aphon) (n=60)
4
noise component [GNE]
pseudo-gl. phon. (n=9) aryepigl. phon. (n=6)
3
glottic phon. (n=15)
2 ventr. phon. (n=10)
normal (n=93)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
irregularity component [jitter, shimmer, period correlation]
Figure 1. Göttinger Hoarseness Diagram; distribution of some cancer groups; cf. Ref. [13].
as jitter (period-length fluctuation) and shimmer (amplitude or energy fluctuation);

on the other hand, measures of the noise component relative to glottal excitation.
These are coarse correlates of subjective roughness and breathiness, respectively.
There are many different definitions of such measures; e. g., for irregularity [15]:
P(M −1)/2
xn − (1/M ) m=−(M −1)/2 xn+m

xn − xn−1
or P(M −1)/2 , M = 3, 5, . . . ,
xn
(1/M ) m=−(M −1)/2 xn+m

each averaged over n, where xn is the length or amplitude or energy of the nth period.
The period energy is more robustly measurable than the amplitude. For the period
length, a method proved to be especially reliable which was based on the correlation
coefficient of subsequent signal intervals [t, t + T ) and [t + T, t + 2T ) and maximizing
with respect to T [16,17] (with interpolation between the signal samples). The average
correlation coefficient of subsequent periods served as another irregularity measure
(Mean Waveform matching Coefficient, MWC).
Traditional measures of the noise component (e. g., NNE [18], CHNR [19]) are
unfortunately dependent on the irregularity measures and the choice of the analysis
window. With strongly irregular voices, they are often not applicable, since they usu-
ally require a harmonic spectral structure. Therefore, we started from the following
assumption [20]: with glottal excitation – regardless how irregular – the excitation in
different bands should be nearly synchronous, with noise excitation, however, asyn-
chronous. Hereon the following construction is based. After downsampling to 10
kHz and linear-predictive inverse filtering for removing the formant structure, the
signal is decomposed into partial bands using Hann-window shaped filters. For each
band, the Hilbert envelope is formed and its mean removed. For all pairs of bands
28 H. W. Strube
that overlap at most half, normalized cross-correlation coefficients are then formed
with shifts within ±0.3 ms. The largest of all these coefficients yields a meassure,
“Glottal-to-Noise Excitation ratio” (GNE) [20].
To obtain a graphical representation appropriate for clinical routine, a two-di-
mensional plot was desired. For this purpose we considered 6 jitter and 6 shimmer
measures, the MWC, and 3 variants each of NNE, CHNR and GNE. The dependencies
between these were investigated using rank correlation and mutual information. It
turned out that the GNE was most independent of the irregularity measures. By
means of principal-component analysis it was shown that, for pathological voices, two
dimensions explain 95% of variance (for normal voices, four dimensions are required).
In this way, a diagram resulted with an abscissa that was an average of a jitter
measure, a shimmer measure and the MWC, and a (linearly transformed) GNE as
ordinate, the “Göttinger Hoarseness Diagram” (GHD).
Normal voices are located at the lower left, aphonic voices at the upper right
in the diagram. Different groups (e. g., persons, vowels, medical diagnoses) can be
represented by ellipses, where the principal axes indicate the standard deviations
with respect to abscissa and ordinate. Fig. 1 shows an example for various cancer
groups.
As in the regions of normal and of aphonic voices two dimensions are not really
sufficient, it was also tried to obtain a finer resolution using Kohonen feature maps [21]
(example see Fig. 2) and discriminant analysis [22]. Also, the relevance of several
breathiness measures for classifying voice pathologies was investigated [23], resulting
in a dimensionality of 7 for benign disorders and 3 for cancer groups.
Figure 2. Kohonen feature map, projected into the GHD plane. Note the folds (marked
by ellipses) near the regions of normal and aphonic voices, indicating importance of higher
dimensions.
Speech research 29
3.4 Transfer to running speech

The voice analysis was originally based on stationary vowels. In clinical diagnostics,
however, a voice analysis from continuous speech is required in order to objectively
assess the vocal disease under normal stress and to be able to treat it optimally.
The stationary phonation corresponds rather to a singing voice, contrary to the
more natural running speech. Thus for a comprehensive description of voice quality
the analysis of running speech is an essential extension of the analysis of stationary
phonation. The methods of vowel analysis should be partially transferable to voiced
intervals in running speech. For this purpose a method was developed to recognize
such intervals automatically. The main difficulty was that the linguistically voiced
sounds are not necessarily realized as voiced for strong voice disorders.
3.4.1 Determination of voiced and unvoiced intervals

A voiced/unvoiced classification by (e. g.) zero-crossing and correlation techniques
directly on the speech signal would, for strongly disturbed voices, recognize too few
voiced intervals. Thus a consideration of the spectral envelope (formant structure) is
preferable, which little depends on the actual glottal excitation. The method uses a
3-layer perceptron with sigmoid activation function (values 0 to 1) as classifier. The
template vectors for its input were formed as follows (numbers refer to Fig. 3):
The speech signals, digitized with 48 kHz, were downsampled to 12 kHz and decom-
posed into overlapping Hann-windowed 40 ms intervals with 10 ms frame shift (3,4).
Pauses are eliminated based on an empirical energy threshold. An LPC analysis of
12th order (autocorrelation method; preemphasis 0.9735) yields a model spectrum
(5), which is converted to 19 critical bands (Bark scale) by summation in overlap-
ping trapezoidal windows (6). It is compressed with exponent 0.23 and normalized
by its maximum over time and critical bands (7,8). The LPC order and method were
optimized to yield minimal misclassification.
The optimal values of the perceptron parameters (number of hidden cells, learning
rate, classification threshold, number of iterations, training material) were deter-
mined in extensive experiments (6750 different cases, about 12000 spectra). Twelve
hidden cells worked best. As training method of the perceptron (9), an accelerated
backpropagation [24] was employed with learning rate 0.01 and momentum term 0.8.
The classification threshold at the output is 0.45, the desired net outputs for training
are 0.1 (unvoiced) and 0.9 (voiced). The weights are initialized with random num-
bers in the range 0 to 1. Three perceptrons with different initial weights were used
in parallel, averaging their recognition scores.
Since our own speech data were unlabeled, they could not serve for training. In-
stead, the training set consisted first of 32 phonetically segmented texts (16 times
“Nordwind und Sonne”, 16 times “Berlingeschichte”) from 16 different normal speak-
ers in the German Phondat database, a total of 154550 labeled Bark spectra, exclud-
ing pauses. The training used up to 5000 iterations. For testing, different subsets of
30 of the 32 texts were used in training and the remaining 2 in the test. The error
score amounted to 4.8%. With the above threshold (0.45), only 25% of these are
falsely classified as voiced; false unvoiced classification is less detrimental. As mis-
30 H. W. Strube
Speech signal dB Formant spectrum
3,4 5
LPC
6
1,2
0 4 8 12 16 20 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000
Sample number [103 ] Frequency [Hz]

6
1
Bark scaling Dynamic compression
Normalization
6 50
0,75
40
7,8
20
0,25
10
9
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
Critical band Critical band

9
Period markers
9
10
NN Synchronization
11
Training data 0 4 8 12 16 20
Sample number [10 3 ]
Figure 3. Voiced/unvoiced classification, see text; cf. Ref. [25]
classification increased near phoneme boundaries and voiced/unvoiced boundaries,

the first and last frame of a segment of equal phonation class were discarded and
plosives were always treated as unvoiced.
After this, a post-training with 12500 spectra from pathologic speech had to be
performed. The learning rate was chosen smaller to avoid too much unlearning of the
previous training with normal voices. For the voiced intervals, only eight stationary
vowels were used here, but for the unvoiced ones, manually selected consonants from
running speech (“Nordwind und Sonne”).
Speech research 31
3.4.2 Analysis of running speech

The analysis was only carried out on connected intervals classified as voiced of mini-
mum length 70 ms. A weighting by length is implemented, since longer intervals are
more expressive. In these intervals period markers are set (Fig. 3 (11)) and acoustic
quantities are determined, for instance:
• period lengths by the waveform matching algorithm;
• jitter (3 definitions), shimmer (3 definitions), MWC, GNE.
From these again a GHD can be constructed. The position of voices in the GHD is
different in running speech from that for stationary vowels, so that a new calibration
is required to obtain comparable representations for both cases. The definition of the
axes, which is based on a principal-component analysis in a high-dimensional space,
has to be carried out anew. Here, the choice of the underlying quantities was the same
for consistency reasons, but their weighting was different. The new GHD is called
“GHDT”, “T” meaning “text”. The coordinates in the GHDT are averaged over the
analyzed intervals of the text utterance, weighted by their lengths. The variances
of the measurement points in the GHD are, because of sound dependence, of course
larger than for stationary vowels, but the mean values retain their expressiveness.
The consistency of the GHDT was checked with various normal and pathological
voices and different utterances.
Besides the GHD, the automatic voiced/unvoiced classification can also be applied
to other diagnostically useful quantities in order to extend their usage to running
speech. This concerns, for instance, the Pitch Amplitude (PA; 1st maximum of the
autocorrelation function of the prediction error signal) and the Spectral Flatness
Ratio (SFR; logarithm of the ratio of geometric and arithmetic means of the spectral
energy density of the prediction error signal).
Based on the acoustic quantities, group analyses of various phonation mechanisms
and cancer groups (significant group separation) can be conducted. For preliminary
and recent presentations of methods and results see Refs. [25–28].
So far, no phonemes were to be recognized but only their linguistic (not actual)
voicedness. Meanwhile, the perceptron method has been extended to recognition of
the six stationary vowels, using 6 output cells. Training was done with 8192 vowels
of at least 2 s duration from all kinds of voice quality. This can help to further
automatize the determination of voice quality.
3.5 Analysis of glottal oscillation

The voice pathologies are related to the functioning of the vocal folds, which form a
self-oscillating nonlinear mechanic and aerodynamic system driven by the glottal air
flow. In order to relate the acoustic voice characteristics to properties of the glottal
oscillation, these must be (if possible, automatically) recorded and characterized by
few quantities. Here, acoustic as well as optical methods are employed. These meth-
ods have not yet been extended to running speech, but the only essential difficulty
to do so appears to be the large amount of data occurring then.
32 H. W. Strube
3.5.1 Glottis pulse parameters by inverse filtering

For describing the glottal oscillation, it is hardly feasible to estimate the many me-
chanical parameters of the vocal-fold system, but characteristic quantities can be
used as occurring in parametric models of the pulse shape of the glottal volume ve-
locity, for instance, the well-known LF-model [29]. Such a model can be fitted to a
measured pulse shape. For the measurement to be feasible during normal speaking,
only inverse-filtering techniques are applicable. That is, the filtering by the vocal
tract is computationally undone in order to obtain the glottal volume velocity. This
leads to the circular problem that the vocal-tract transfer function cannot be esti-
mated exactly enough without knowledge of the input signal. Thus, a simultaneous
estimation of the transfer function and the glottal pulse (as LF-model) was carried
out iteratively with a multidimensional optimization method, see Fig. 4.
The transfer function was computed in a pitch-related way with a modified DAP al-
gorithm [32] and the Itakura-Saito error occurring therein was also used as optimality
criterion for the total iteration. The method was verified with synthetic speech, where
beside the LF parameters also derived quantities such as Open-Quotient, Closed-
Quotient, Speed-Quotient, Parabolic Spectral Parameter were compared with the
given data. For natural speech, the energies of 200-ms intervals and the electroglot-
tographically measured open-quotient were employed for comparison with the model.
A detailed description can be found in Refs. [30,31].
Speech signal
Choice of Spectrum Inverse filtering,

Glottis model
parameter set without glottis DAP
Error
Inverse filtered
Multi−dimensional signal
Winner optimizer
set
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
-0.1
-0.2
-0.3
-0.4
-0.5
2.1 2.105 2.11 2.115 2.12 2.125
Time [s]
Figure 4. Top: Scheme of estimating glottal pulse and transfer function, cf. [30,31]. Bot-
tom: Example of estimated glottal flow derivative and fitted LF-model (gray, smooth).
Speech research 33
600
500
Area [Pixels]
400
300
200
100
0
1.3 1.31 1.32
Time [s]
Figure 5. Left: disconnected glottal area and its recognized boundary (white). Right:
Example of a measured opening-area time course. After Ref. [33].
3.5.2 Video evaluations

Although the video methods are not presently applicable to running speech, they
must be mentioned here because of their importance. The acoustic measurable quan-
tities are to be related to properties of the glottal oscillation.For automatic evaluation
of the stroboscopic color recordings usual in phoniatric diagnostics an automatic im-
age segmentation method was developed that recognizes objects such as vocal folds,
glottal opening etc. using a perceptron.
The details of the oscillations were investigated by means of high-speed record-
ings (Wolf HS ENDOCAM 5560, 8-bit grayscale, 256 × 256 pixels, 4000 frames/s,
max. 8192 frames). The glottal opening was automatically recognized by a three-
dimensional (area × time) algorithm [33] (older version see Ref. [34]). First, “active
regions” are determined that show fast temporal brightness changes, and the largest
one is circumscribed by a rectangle. In this three-dimensional rectangle×time re-
gion, an inner and an outer region are constructed in the following way. Starting
from seed points appropriately chosen for each time instant, a competitive region
growth (modified after Ref. [35]) is performed into neighborhoods chosen to be as
homogeneous as possible, until both regions border on each other. The inner region
is slightly enlarged by erosion [35]. Even disconnected glottal areas are thus correcty
recognized, Fig. 5.
For investigating the relation of glottal quantities to acoustic quantities (e. g.,
GNE), from 15 recordings 263 data sets of 100 ms each (sufficiently voiced, not over-
lapping) were constructed. Each contained the four values GNE, mean maximum
glottal area, mean minimum glottal area and closed-quotient (CQ, relative time of
closed glottis). There was a clear correlation between CQ and GNE (0.536, nonzero
with significance level 3.3 · 10−18 ), likewise between the minimum opening area and
the GNE (–0.464, nonzero with significance level 5.1 · 10−14 ). Spearman rank corre-
lation coefficients were also tried and were close to these values. This corresponds to
34 H. W. Strube
the expectations: the longer and tighter the glottal closure is, the smaller the noise
component should be.
As for the extension to running speech, the high-speed video method is limited by
the amount of frames that can be recorded continuously, about 2 s of speech.
Acknowledgements. The author thanks Prof. Eberhard Kruse (Dept. of Phoniatrics and
Paedaudiology) for his engaged project management and all of our coworkers, especially
Matthias Fröhlich, Dirk Michaelis, Jan Lessing, Sven Anderson, who have mainly carried
out the work described here. We are indebted to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
(DFG) for funding this work under grants Kr 1469/2 and 1469/5.
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On the use of specific signal types

in hearing research
A. Kohlrausch1,2 and S. van de Par1
1
Digital Signal Processing Group, Philips Research Europe,
Eindhoven, The Netherlands
2
Human-Technology Interaction, Eindhoven University of Technology,
Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Email: 1 [email protected], 2 [email protected]
Abstract. In this contribution, we review a number of specific signal types that have been
introduced in auditory research in the past 20 years. Through the introduction of digital
computers into experimental and theoretical hearing research, the freedom to construct and
use specific acoustic stimuli in behavorial and also physiological research has grown steadily.
In parallel, the use of computer models allowed to analyze and predict, within certain limits,
how specific properties of acoustic stimuli influence the perception of a listener. As in other
fields of physics, the close interplay between experimental tests and quantitative models has
been shown to be essential in advancing our understanding of human hearing.
1 Introduction
One of the scientific areas to which the research groups at the Dritte Physikalische
Institut (DPI) contributed significantly is the wide field of psychoacoustics. The
interest in this area can be traced back to early research activities of its first director,
Erwin Meyer [1]. Evidence of his strong and continuing interest is provided by the
fact that he chose the opportunity of his inaugural lecture after his new appointment
at the university of Göttingen, which he gave in January 1948, to talk about: ‘Über
den derzeitigen Stand der Theorie des Hörens (On the current state of the theory of
hearing)’ [2].
One of the best-known psychoacoustic contributions coming from the DPI is based
on the work by Haas [3]. The Haas-effect refers to the observation that a reflection
that follows the direct sound with a short delay up to 50 ms can be significantly
higher in level than the direct sound, without being perceived as annoying. In later
years, hearing-related problems were mostly studied in the context of room-acoustic
questions, and most perceptual activities in the 1970’s were devoted to the broad
area of subjective room acoustics [4].
The classical psychoacoustic studies, based on well-controlled acoustic stimuli de-
livered via headphones to subjects sitting in a sound-isolated, and often very narrow,
38 A. Kohlrausch and S. van de Par
listening booth, increased strongly throughout the 1980’s. This increased interest
was reflected even in a rebuilding of the central space in the “Halle” of the DPI, in
front of the “Reflexionsarmer Raum”, where the control panels for the loudspeaker
dome were dismantled and spaces for two listening booths were created. In parallel
with the acoustic spaces, also the computer infrastructure for controlling listening
experiments and generating signals with more complexity than contained in Gaus-
sian noise or sinusoids grew steadily in this period. In our view, this experimental
infrastructure together with a growing group of young scientists were essential for
the increasing level of sophistication of hearing research at the DPI. In the following,
we want to describe and analyze one of the factors, namely the creativity in using
signals with specific spectral and temporal properties in listening experiments and
model simulations. This creativity started at the DPI, but was spread to other places
like Eindhoven and Oldenburg, and more recently to Lyngby/Kopenhagen, and has
influenced many research paradigms in hearing research groups all over the world.
2 Harmonic complex tone stimuli
The first class of signals we will discuss are signals with a periodic waveform. De-
pending on the way of construction of those signals, they are either considered in
the context of their temporal properties (e. g., when a regular series of clicks is gen-
erated and the perceptual influence of a slight temporal deviation from regularity is
considered, see, e. g., Ref. [5]) or in the context of their spectral properties (consider,
e. g., the role of the vocal tract filter on the resulting vowel quality). Of course,
from a mathematical point of view, time-domain and spectral descriptions are fully
equivalent, if indeed not only the power spectrum, but the full complex spectrum,
including the phase, is considered. Historically, however, temporal and spectral views
were quite distinct, mainly under the influence of signal analysis systems that allowed
to represent the power spectrum, but not the phase spectrum. Also the paradigm of
critical bands and auditory filters, which for a long time were only defined in terms
of their overall bandwidth and their amplitude characteristics (see, e. g., Ref. [6]),
made it difficult to bring the temporal and spectral views closer together. Again,
the increasing use of computer programs to generate acoustic stimuli and to per-
form time-domain modeling of perceptual processes emphasized the role of the phase
spectrum on the perceptual quality of periodic signals [7]. In the following, we will
focus on the description of one specific type of complex tones, those with so-called
Schroeder phases.
2.1 Schroeder-phase harmonic complex tones

2.1.1 Definition
The term Schroeder phase refers to a short paper by Schroeder from 1970 [8]. In
this paper, he addressed the problem how the peak-to-peak amplitude of a periodic
waveform with a given power spectrum can be minimized. He related this problem
to the observation that frequency-modulated stimuli have a low peak factor. The
proposed solution lies in a phase choice which gives the signal an FM-like property.
Specific signal types in hearing research 39
The general solution derives the individual phase values without any restriction for
the power spectrum. A more specific case, which has found its way into hearing
research, is that of a harmonic complex with a flat power spectrum. The solution for
the individual phase values of such a complex is as follows:
φn = −πn(n − 1)/N , (1)
with N the total number of components in the complex. The important term in
this equation is the quadratic relation between component number, n, and compo-
nent phase, φn , which will induce an approximately linear increase in instantaneous
frequency. The normalization with N creates a signal, for which the instantaneous
frequency sweeps once per period from the frequency of the lowest to that of the high-
est component in the complex. In fact, the instantaneous frequency has a periodic
sawtooth-like course for such signals.
It is obvious that reversing the initial sign in Eq. (1) has no influence on the peak
factor of the resulting signal, but it will invert the direction of the linear frequency
sweep. Because these two versions of a Schroeder-phase signal lead to substantially
different percepts, a convention has been introduced to distinguish them. A negative
Schroeder-phase signal is a signal were the phases of individual components are chosen
as in Eq. (1). In contrast, a positive Schroeder-phase signal has phase values with a
positive sign in front of the fraction. One can memorize this relation by using the
fact that the sign of the phase is opposite to the change in instantaneous frequency.
2.1.2 Acoustic properties

By construction, Schroeder-phase stimuli have a relatively flat temporal envelope and
the peak factor, defined as the relation between envelope maximum relative to the
rms-value of the signal, is much lower than for other phase choices. This is demon-
strated in Fig. 1, in which the waveforms for harmonic complexes composed of 19
equal-amplitude harmonics are compared for three different choices of the component
phase: Besides positive and negative Schroeder-phase stimuli, the top part shows the
waveform of a zero-phase stimulus, all with a spectrum from 200 Hz to 2000 Hz. For
this latter stimulus, the energy is concentrated at very short instances within each pe-
riod, leading to a much higher peak factor. The spectro-temporal properties of these
signals can be seen more clearly in a short-time spectral representation. Figure 2
shows the spectra of the three signals from Fig. 1 calculated using a moving 5-ms
Hanning window. The sawtooth-like frequency modulation of the two Schroeder-
phase complexes is pronounced in this representation. In addition, the plot for the
zero-phase complex shows ridges at the spectral edges of 200 and 2000 Hz. These
relative spectral maxima can be perceived as pitch, superimposed on the 100-Hz vir-
tual pitch of the complexes, and the presence of these pitch percepts has been used
as a measure of the internal representation of such harmonic complexes [10,11]. The
visibility of the temporal structures in the short-time spectrum depends critically on
the duration of the temporal window, relative to the period of the sound. The shorter
the window, the stronger temporal changes are visible, the longer the window, the
stronger the power spectral properties are emphasized.
Figure 1. Time functions of harmonic

complexes for three different choices
of the component’s starting phases.
Top: φn = 0 zero-phase complex,
middle: φn = −πn(n − 1)/N , neg-
ative Schroeder-phase complex, bot-
tom: φn = +πn(n − 1)/N , pos-
itive Schroeder-phase complex. All
complexes are composed of the equal-
amplitude harmonics 2 to 20 of funda-
mental frequency 100 Hz. For this plot,
the amplitude of an individual har-
monic was set at 1. Reused with per-
mission from Ref. [9]. Copyright 1995,
Acoustical Society of America.
2.1.3 Role in hearing research and perceptual insights
The first paper in which the Schroeder-phase formula was used in hearing experiments
was published by Mehrgardt and Schroeder in the proceedings of the 6th International
Symposium on Hearing, 1983 [12]. In this paper, the quadratic phase formula from
Eq. (1) was combined with an additional scaling factor, which allowed to control
the spread of signal energy throughout the period. The spectrum of the harmonic
complex was, however, not flat as in most later investigations, but the individual
components had Hanning-weighted amplitudes. This paper emphasized the influence
of the masker’s temporal waveform on the observed masking behavior and showed,
how strongly the acoustic waveform can vary by just varying the phase spectrum.
The great potential of Schroeder-phase signals to observe the phase characteristic
of the auditory filter was found out quite accidentically. During his master thesis
research, Bennett Smith was interested in acoustic figure-ground phenomena, where
spatial orientation in the visual domain was translated into linear frequency modu-
lation in the auditory domain [13]. In the construction of his acoustic background
stimuli, he made use of the Schroeder-phase formula. He did, unfortunately, not find
any effect of acoustic figure-ground orientation on audibility, but made instead an-
Figure 2. Short-time spectral representation of the signals from Fig. 1 using a Hanning
window with length 5 ms. The left panel shows the zero-phase signal, the middle panel the
negative Schroeder phase and the right panel the positive Schroeder phase complex. Reused
with permission from Ref. [9]. Copyright 1995, Acoustical Society of America.
other observation: the audibility of a sinusoidal stimulus in a complex-tone masker

depended strongly on the sign in the phase formula: When the background was
constructed with a positive sign, the masked thresholds were lower by up to 20 dB,
compared to the situation in which the phase sign was negative.
This large threshold difference formed a considerable scientific puzzle: both masker
versions had a similarly flat temporal envelope, so there was no reason to assume a
difference in masking potential for simultaneously presented sinusoids. The effect
was finally understood on the basis of computer simulations with a time-domain
basilar-membrane model which had been realized by Hans-Werner Strube [14]. This
model was, at that time, the first computer model with a realistic phase characteristic
for the basilar membrane, which allowed to compute the basilar-membrane output
in the time domain, and it was sufficiently time-efficient. Strube observed that the
two versions of the Schroeder-phase complex lead to very different waveforms at the
output of the filter element that represented a specific place on the basilar membrane.
One waveform was clearly more modulated, and the existence of valleys in the masker
waveform fitted nicely to the observation by Smith that this masker also led to lower
masked thresholds: the target signal could be detected easier in these masker valleys.
In the next years, a great number of further experiments and model simulations
were performed [9,15,16] which led to the following insights. The clue to understand
the differences between positive and negative Schroeder-phase stimuli lies in the phase
characteristic of the auditory filter. If subjects have to detect a narrowband stimulus
in a broadband masker, only the frequency region around the target frequency is
of interest. In order to simulate the transformations in the auditory periphery for
such an experiment, we have to compute the waveforms of the acoustic stimuli at the
output of the auditory filter that is centered on the target frequency. This waveform
will depend critically on the amplitude and the phase characteristic of the auditory
filter.
Figure 3. Responses of a linear

basilar-membrane model at resonance
frequency 1100 Hz to the three har-
monic maskers with fundamental fre-
quency 100 Hz shown in Fig. 1. The top
panel shows the zero-phase signal, the
middle panel the negative Schroeder
phase and the bottom panel the pos-
itive Schroeder phase complex. Reused
with permission from Ref. [9]. Copy-
right 1995, Acoustical Society of Amer-
ica.
The most important conclusion was that, for the right choice of input parameters,
the phase characteristic of a Schroeder-phase stimulus matches quite closely this
phase characteristic of the auditory filter, at least in the spectral region of maximum
transfer of the filter. Since Schroeder-phase stimuli come in two flavours, one version,
the negative Schroeder-phase stimulus, will have the same phase characteristic as the
auditory filter while the positive Schroeder-phase stimulus has a phase spectrum
that is opposite to that of the filter. In the transfer through a filter, the input
phase spectrum and the filter phase spectrum add to give the phase spectrum of the
output signal. For the positive Schroeder phase, we thus have the situation of phase
compensation, and the resulting filtered signal at the output of the auditory filter
has a nearly constant phase of all components. Conceptually, this situation is quite
similar to pulse compression through frequency modulation, as it is used in radar
and sonar technology. In a way, the positive Schroeder-phase stimuli are matched in
their phase characteristic to the auditory filters as they are realized mechanically in
the inner ear.
This interpretation has some interesting consequences: if a specific Schroeder-
phase stimulus is optimally matched in its phase to the inner ear filter at a certain
frequency, then such a signal should have a higher peak factor after filtering than a
zero-phase input stimulus. This relation is analyzed in Fig. 3, which shows waveforms
at the output of a linear basilar-membrane filter tuned to 1100 Hz. The two panels
at the bottom show the waveforms of the two Schroeder-phase complexes. While the
broadband input signals to the filter have a flat temporal envelope (cf. Fig. 1), both
waveforms have a clear amplitude modulation after filtering, which follows the 10-ms
periodicity of the stimulus. But the depth of modulation is quite different for the
two signals, the positive Schroeder-phase stimulus at the bottom has a much higher
peak factor than the negative complex in the middle. This simulation reflects the
initial observation made by Strube in Ref. [14].
The top panel shows the filtered version of the zero-phase complex, which has a
highly peaked input waveform. The filtered waveform shows, within each period,
the impulse response of the auditory filter, because the zero-phase complex is similar
to a periodic sequence of pulses. Comparing the top and the bottom panel reveals
that, indeed, the positive Schroeder-phase complex has a somewhat higher peak
factor than the zero-phase complex, and its energy is more concentrated in time, as
expected based on the pulse-compression analogon.
The relation between zero-phase and positive-Schroeder-phase stimuli formed also
the key to estimate the phase properties of a specific point on the basilar membrane.
If we were able to determine the phase curvature, for which the match between
stimulus and filter phase is “optimal”, then this value was an indication for the phase
curvature (or the frequency-dependent group delay) of the filter. The clue to such
an analysis is given by comparing perceptual thresholds for positive Schroeder-phase
maskers with those for zero-phase maskers. For maskers, for which this difference is
largest (and for which the Schroeder-phase stimulus as masker gives lower masked
thresholds), the phase curvature at the signal frequency is an estimate of the filter
phase. Figure 4 shows data from Ref. [9] which were used for such a computation.
In the region of f0 values between 100 and 150 Hz, the thresholds obtained with the
positive Schroeder-phase complex (left-pointing triangles) and with the zero-phase
complex (squares) show the largest difference. For theses complexes, the second
derivative of the phase-versus-frequency relation, which indicates the phase curvature
has values between 1.05 × 10−5 π/Hz2 and 0.74 × 10−5 π/Hz2 . We can conclude that
the curvature of the phase characteristic for the basilar-membrane filter centered at
1100 Hz should be in the range of these two values. A similar conclusion about the
phase curvature can be derived from the parameters of those complexes, for which
positive Schroeder-phase and zero-phase complexes lead to approximately the same
threshold. In this case, the internal envelope modulation of the two complexes after
filtering on the basilar membrane should be approximately equal. As explained in
detail in Ref. [9], the phase curvature in the Schroeder-phase stimuli should be half
the value of the filter curvature, and this is reached for fundamental frequencies of 50
to 75 Hz. And exactly in this region, the two lower curves in Fig. 4 cross each other.
This consideration allowed a first computation of the auditory filter phase for one
frequency, 1100 Hz. In Ref. [9], additional threshold measurements were included
for frequencies 550, 2200 and 4400 Hz, thus covering a range of three octaves. It is
often assumed that the auditory filter has a nearly constant quality factor across the
range of audible frequencies. If this was also true for the phase characteristic, then the
Figure 4. Simultaneous masked thresholds of a 260-ms, 1100-Hz signal as a function of

the fundamental frequency f0 of the harmonic complex masker. Thresholds are expressed
relative to the level of a single masker component. The maskers were presented at a level of
75 dB SPL. Squares: zero-phase complex; right-pointing triangles: negative Schroeder-phase
complex; left-pointing triangles: positive Schroeder-phase complex. Reused with permission
from Ref. [9]. Copyright 1995, Acoustical Society of America.
results obtained at 1100 Hz would allow a direct prediction for the phase characteristic
in the range of three octaves around 1100 Hz. The comparison with the results at
550 Hz indeed revealed the expected relation, while towards higher frequencies, the
curvature changed somewhat less with center frequency than expected for a system,
in which the amplitude and phase characteristics of the filters remain constant on a
logarithmic frequency scale.
One final important observation from these initial Schroeder-phase studies needs
to be mentioned. The view on the shape of the auditory filters was in the 1980’s
strongly influenced by the work of Patterson, Moore and colleagues, who had used
the notched-noise technique to estimate the amplitude characteristic of the auditory
filter. The best characterization was possible with a so-called rounded exponential
filter shape [17]. A time-domain implementation of a filter with such an amplitude
characteric was possible based on so-called gamma-tone filters [18,19]. Due to the
large amount of studies supporting this concept of auditory filters, we were interested
to analyze the Schroeder-phase stimuli with such a filter.
Figure 5 presents, in a similar format as Figs. 1 and 3, four periods of the waveform
for harmonic complexes with fundamental frequency 100 Hz. The analysis shows the
output of the gamma-tone filter tuned to 1100 Hz, and the three subpanels are for the
three different phase choices. It is apparant that this filter does not lead to differences
in the modulation depth between the three stimuli, and based on this simulation
one would expect quite similar masking behaviour of all three complex tones, in
contrast to the experimental data. The major reason for the similar treatment of the
two Schroeder-phase maskers by the gamma-tone filter is its antisymmetric phase
Figure 5. Responses of a linear,

fourth-order gamma-tone model at res-
onance frequency 1100 Hz to the three
harmonic maskers with fundamental
frequency 100 Hz shown in Fig. 1. The
top panel shows the zero-phase sig-
nal, the middle panel the negative
Schroeder-phase and the bottom panel
the positive Schroeder-phase complex.
Reused with permission from Ref. [9].
Copyright 1995, Acoustical Society of
America.
characteristic relative to its resonance frequency. The curvature of the filter phase
changes its sign at the resonance frequency from negative to positive. A filter with
such a phase characteristic can never flatten out the phase of a Schroeder-phase
complex over the full range of its passband.
2.1.4 Later developments

Although the first paper on Schroeder-phase stimuli was already published in 1986 [15],
the paradigm was only widely adopted after publication of our second paper in
1995 [9]. The first papers that used the term “Schroeder phase” in their title were
published in 1997 [20,21]. Many authors related psychoacoustic findings with Schroe-
der-phase stimuli to the properties of the basilar membrane. Differences that were
found between normal-hearing and hearing-impaired subjects and also influences of
the overall presentation level indicated some role of active processes in creating large
differences between positive and negative Schroeder-phase stimuli [21–23]. Based on
the results of these studies, Summers concluded: “The current results showed large
differences in the effectiveness of positive and negative Schroeder-phase maskers un-
der test conditions associated with nonlinear cochlear processing. The two maskers
were more nearly equal in effectiveness for conditions associated with more linear pro-
cessing (high levels, hearing-impaired listeners). A number of factors linked to the

cochlear amplifier, including possible suppressive effects and level-dependent changes
in the phase and magnitude response of effective filtering, may have contributed to
these differences.” (Ref. [23], p. 2316).
The analysis of the phase characteristics of auditory filters was further refined
by Oxenham and Dau [24,25]. They varied the phase curvature of Schroeder-phase
complexes by using a scalar multiplier in front of Eq. (1), very similar to the use of
the Schroeder-phase formula by Mehrgardt and Schroeder [12]. They concluded that
the scaling invariance of filter phase with filter center-frequency, as expected for a
set of filters with constant quality factor, might hold for frequencies above 1 kHz, but
not for lower frequencies.
Schroeder-phase stimuli have also been used in physiological experiments, which
allowed a direct test of the basic hypothesis of the role of peripheral filtering on
modulation depth of the waveform, as published in 1985 by Strube. In 2000, Recio
and Rhode [26] measured the basilar membrane response in the chinchilla for positive
and negative Schroeder-phase stimuli and also for clicks, thus using very similar
types of stimuli as the early psychoacoustic studies. They concluded: “The behavior
of BM responses to positive and negative Schroeder complexes is consistent with
the theoretical analysis performed by Kohlrausch and Sander in 1995, in which the
curvature i. e., the second derivative of the phase versus frequency curve of the BM
was used to account for the differences in the response to each of the two Schroeder
phases. [...] Hence, phase characteristics of basilar membrane responses to positive
Schroeder-phase stimuli show reduced curvatures (relative to the stimulus), and, as
a result, peaked waveforms (Kohlrausch and Sander, 1995)” (Ref. [26], p. 2296).
3 Noise signals with non-Gaussian statistic
An important class of signals used in hearing science are noise signals. Although
the meaning of the term noise is wider in daily use, in hearing sciences, it refers to
signals that are inherently random. When we consider for example white Gaussian
noise, samples taken from its temporal waveform are randomly distributed according
to a Gaussian distribution and samples taken at subsequent moments in time are
uncorrelated. The frequency domain representation of white Gaussian noise shows a
complex spectrum where the real and imaginary parts are also Gaussian distributed.
The spectrum is called white because the signal energy is uniformly distributed across
frequency.
Often noise signals are subjected to some kind of spectral filtering. Although this
influences the spectral envelope of the signal, the Gaussian distribution of the time
domain samples and the complex spectral components are not influenced. The cor-
relation, however, across samples taken at different moments in time is influenced.
This is reflected in the autocorrelation function. For a white noise signal, the auto-
correlation function is peaked at lag zero, and zero at all other lags, in line with the
idea that samples are mutually uncorrelated. For a filtered noise, however, there will
be correlations across samples which is reflected in the autocorrelation function at
lags different than zero.
Noise signals have been extensively used to study auditory masking where they
often serve as masker signals. For example, in the early experiments related to criti-
cal bandwidth by Hawkins and Stevens [27], white Gaussian noise maskers were used
to measure the dependence of masked thresholds of a tonal signal as a function of
frequency. Probably the preference for using noise signals as a masker is related to its
uniform energy distribution across time and frequency and the fact that it is a well
defined signal. The inherently stochastic nature of noise, however, has implications
for its masking behavior as was demonstrated in studies that employed reproducible
noise for which the stochastic uncertainties in the noise are effectively removed. Gen-
erally, reproducible noise produces lower masked thresholds than running noise [28].
3.1 Low-noise noise
3.1.1 Definition
In the previous section we discussed that a filtering operation on white Gaussian

noise causes the autocorrelation function to change from a delta function at lag zero,
to a pattern that reflects predictability of successive time samples of such noise. This
predictability is reflected in a smooth development of the envelope of the time domain
noise waveform1 . The rate of fluctuation in the temporal envelope is proportional to
the bandwidth of the filtered noise signal. The spectrum of the envelope has a large
DC component and a downward tilting slope that leaves very little spectral power
beyond frequencies equal to the bandwidth of the bandpass noise. Interestingly, the
degree of fluctuation is independent of the bandwidth, which is reflected in the proba-
bility density function of the temporal envelope values which is Rayleigh distributed.
Thus, there is an inherently high degree of fluctuation in Gaussian noise.
The inherent fluctuations that are present in Gaussian noise have prompted the
development of so-called low-noise noise [29]. This special type of noise has the same
spectral envelope as Gaussian noise, but a much lower degree of inherent fluctuations
in its temporal envelope, hence the name low-noise noise. This allowed the study of
the contribution of envelope fluctuations to auditory masking phenomena by com-
paring the masking effect of Gaussian and low-noise noise. The first to pursue this
idea where Pumplin and Hartmann [30].
3.1.2 Stimulus generation
The original manner to generate low-noise, such as promoted by Ref. [29] was via a
special optimization algorithm. First a band-pass noise was digitally generated in
the frequency domain by setting amplitudes in a restricted spectral range to some
specific values, e. g., one constant value, and randomizing the phases. Such a noise
will approximate all the properties of a bandpass Gaussian noise when the product of
time and frequency is sufficiently large. Via a steepest descent algorithm, the phase
spectrum was modified step-by-step in the direction which made the temporal enve-
1
There are alternative manners to determine the envelope of a signal which lead to
somewhat different envelopes. We will consider here the Hilbert envelope.
Figure 6. Illustration of the low-noise noise generation. The top panel shows the time-
domain Gaussian noise at the start of the iterative process, the middle panel the low-
noise noise after one iteration, the lower panel, the low-noise noise after 10 iterations. All
waveforms are shown with their respective envelopes.
lope more flat, according to some statistical measure2 . After a sequence of iterations,
a low-noise noise waveform was obtained with a rather flat temporal envelope and
the initial amplitude spectrum. Thus, summarizing, the method of Pumplin obtained
low-noise noise by modifying the phase spectrum in a special way.
Later on, several alternative manners to generate low-noise noise were proposed
and evaluated by Kohlrausch et al. [31]. We will here describe the method that led
to the lowest degree of fluctuation in the temporal envelope. The method consists of
an iterative process that is initiated by generating a time-discrete Gaussian bandpass
noise. The iterative process then consists of a sequence of straightforward steps.
First the Hilbert envelope of the noise is calculated. Secondly, the noise waveform
is divided by its Hilbert envelope on a sample-to-sample basis in the time domain.
For the rare occasions that the Hilbert envelope is equal to zero, the resulting division
is set to zero. In the third step, a bandpass filtering is applied to remove the new
spectral components outside of the specified bandpass range that were introduced by
the division operation in the previous step. By repeating the iterative steps several
times, a much flatter envelope is obtained.
After the first two steps, calculating the Hilbert envelope and dividing the noise
waveform by its Hilbert envelope, the resulting temporal waveform will have a flat
envelope. The spectrum will also be modified considerably. The division by the Hil-
2
normalized fourth moment of the temporal envelope distribution
Number of iterations normalized fourth moment

0 3.030
1 1.845
2 1.701
4 1.591
6 1.552
8 1.535
10 1.526
Hartmann & Pumplin 1.580
Table 1. Normalized fourth moment of low-noise noise as a function of the number of

iterations. The bottom row gives the value from Hartmann and Pumplin [30] for comparison.
bert envelope can be seen as a time-domain multiplication with the reciprocal Hilbert
envelope. In the frequency domain, this is equivalent to a convolution of the bandpass
noise signal with the spectrum of the reciprocal Hilbert envelope. Due to the large
DC component present in the envelope, also the reciprocal envelope will have a large
DC component. Thus, the convolution in the frequency domain will be dominated
by this DC component and as a consequence, the spectrum of the bandpass noise will
remain largely intact. However, there will be additional, new spectral components
that are outside the bandpass range of the original bandpass noise.
Therefore, in the third step, bandpass filtering is applied to remove the new spec-
tral components outside of the specified bandpass range that were introduced by the
division operation in the previous step. Considering the argumentation given above,
only a relatively small amount of signal power is removed by this operation. Nev-
ertheless, the temporal envelope will not be flat anymore. In Fig. 6, the temporal
waveforms are shown for the original 100-Hz wide Gaussian bandpass noise centered
at 500 Hz, that was input to the iterative process (top panel), and after the first
iteration of our algorithm (middle panel). As can be seen, the degree of envelope
fluctuation is reduced considerably. By repeating the iterative steps several times, a
much flatter envelope is obtained after 10 iterations (lower panel). Convergence is
assumed to be obtained due to the DC component in the Hilbert envelope becoming
more dominant over the higher spectral components after each iteration.
In Fig. 7, the same signals are shown, only now represented in the frequency
domain. As can be seen, the original, bandpass Gaussian noise has a uniform spectral
envelope. The spectrum of the low-noise noise signal is, even after 10 iterations, quite
similar to the spectrum of the Gaussian signal. There is, however, a tendency for the
spectrum to have a somewhat lower level towards the edges of the bandpass range.
As a measure of envelope fluctuation, Table 1 shows the normalized fourth moment
for different numbers of iterations of our algorithm. The value obtained by Hartmann
and Pumplin [30] is shown at the bottom of the table. As can be seen, already after
6 iterations, we obtain a lower degree of envelope fluctuation than the method of
Hartmann and Pumplin. After 10 iterations, the normalized fourth moment is 1.526,
close to the theoretical minimum of 1.5 for a sinusoidal signal.
In summary, the iterative method is able to create a low-noise noise by modifying
both the phase and the amplitude spectrum. The specific ordering of spectral com-
Figure 7. Illustration of the low-noise noise generation. The top panel shows the power
spectrum of the Gaussian noise at the start of the iterative process, the middle panel the
spectrum of the low-noise noise after one iteration, the lower panel the spectrum of the
low-noise noise after 10 iterations.
ponents in the passband causes the flat envelope that is seen in the lower panel of
Fig. 6. Due to this careful arrangement of phase and amplitude values throughout
the noise spectrum, any modification of this spectral ordering will affect the flatness
of the temporal envelope. In Fig. 8, the low-noise noise signal of Fig. 6, which was
centered at 500 Hz, and had a bandwidth of 100 Hz, is shown after being filtered with
a 78-Hz-wide gamma-tone filter centered at 500 Hz. As can be seen, the degree of en-
velope fluctuation has increased considerably. Since the gamma-tone filter used here
is a reasonable first-order approximation of auditory peripheral filtering, this figure
demonstrates that the properties that are present in the external stimulus should not
be taken to be representative for the manner in which the stimulus is represented
within the auditory system.
As discussed before, Gaussian noise is a frequently used signal to serve as a mask-

ing stimulus in experiments investigating auditory masking. Early experiments of
Fletcher [32] used noise signals of various bandwidths to determine detection thresh-
olds of sinusoidal signals centered in the bandpass noise maskers. In these exper-
iments it was found that only the masker energy that was spectrally close to the
sinusoidal target signal contributed to the masking effect of the noise. This led to
the concept of the critical band which indicates the spectral range that contributes
to the masking effect on the sinusoidal signal. The integrated intensity of the masker
within this range determines the masked threshold.
Figure 8. Illustration of the low-noise noise generation. The top panel shows a low-
noise noise with a bandwidth of 100 Hz after 10 iterations, the lower panel shows the same
waveform after peripheral filtering with a gamma-tone filter of 78-Hz width.
This purely intensity-based account of masking does not provide insights into the
reasons for observing quite different masked thresholds when narrow-band noises or
sinusoidal signals with the same overall level are used as a masker. When the band-
width of the noise is smaller than the critical bandwidth, there is no difference in the
masker intensity within that critical band and, if overall masker intensity determines
masking, thresholds should be the same. Typically, however, thresholds for tonal
maskers are about 20 dB lower than for narrowband Gaussian noise maskers [33].
One of the factors that is believed to contribute to the different masking strength
of these signals is the difference in the inherent envelope fluctuations. A tonal masker
has no inherent envelope fluctuations, and the addition of the target tone will intro-
duce a beating pattern which may be an effective cue for detecting the presence of
the target. In a noise masker, however, the masker itself already has a high degree
of fluctuation. Addition of the sinusoidal signal does not alter the properties of the
envelope fluctuations by a significant degree and therefore, changes in the temporal
envelope pattern may be a less salient cue for a noise masker.
Low-noise noise maskers provide an elegant stimulus to verify that the inherent
fluctuations in Gaussian noise are an important factor contributing to its strong
masking effect. Such an experiment had been done by Hartmann and Pumplin [30],
but the difference that they found was only 5 dB. This difference is considerably
smaller than the 20-dB difference in masking found for Gaussian noise maskers and
tonal signals. A complicating factor may be that the inherent fluctuations in the
Figure 9. Masked thresholds for 100-Hz wide Gaussian-noise (triangles) and low-noise
noise maskers (circles) as a function center frequency. Reused with permission from Ref. [31].
Copyright 1997, Hirzel Verlag and European Acoustics Association.
low-noise noise that was used by Pumplin and Hartmann were still strong enough
to cause a significant masking effect. Furthermore, the bandwidth of their low-noise
noise stimulus was 100 Hz around a center frequency of 500 Hz. Although such a
bandwidth agrees approximately with the estimates of auditory filter bandwidth at
this frequency, peripheral filtering may have caused a significant reduction of the
flatness of their low-noise noise stimulus, as we demonstrated in Fig. 8, where a
low-noise noise signal with their spectral properties was filtered with a 1-ERB wide
filter.
A more recent experiment by Kohlrausch et al. [31] used low-noise noise created
by the iterative method outlined in the previous section which results in an even
lower degree of inherent fluctuation. In addition, the experiment of Kohlrausch et al.
measured masked thresholds as a function of center frequency of the low-noise noise
masker while keeping the target tone always spectrally centered within the 100-Hz
wide noise masker. The highest center frequency in their experiment was 10 kHz,
a frequency where the peripheral filter bandwidth is considerably larger than the
masker bandwidth. As a result it can be assumed that the peripheral filtering will
only have a marginal effect on the temporal envelope flatness of the low-noise noise.
Thus in these experiments, the difference in masking thresholds between Gaussian
noise and low-noise noise should be about the same size as the difference seen for
Gaussian noise and tonal maskers.
The results of the experiments by Kohlrausch et al. [31] are shown in Fig. 9. As can
be seen the masked thresholds for Gaussian noise (triangles) are constant for center
frequencies of 500 Hz and above. This is in line with the fact that auditory filtering
does not reduce masker intensity for a 100-Hz wide masker in this frequency range,
and that the degree of inherent envelope fluctuations does not vary as a function of
Figure 10. Masked thresholds for Gaussian noise (dashed lines) and low-noise noise maskers
(solid lines) as a function of frequency offset between the masker and target. Squares show
100-Hz wide maskers and circles 10-Hz wide maskers both presented at 70 dB SPL.
center frequency. For low-noise noise (circles), however, we see a clear dependence of
thresholds on the center frequency. Although low-noise noise thresholds were lower
than Gaussian noise thresholds already at a center frequency of 1 kHz, for 10 kHz we
see a much larger difference of more than 15 dB which is much more similar to the
difference observed for sinusoidal and Gaussian noise maskers. The higher thresholds
for lower frequencies are well in line with the idea that peripheral filtering affects the
temporal envelope flatness of low-noise noise.
A variant of the experiment by Kohlrausch et al. [34] investigated the effect of a
frequency offset between masker and sinusoidal target signal with the target always
higher in frequency than the masker [35]. The addition of the sinusoidal target to
the masker band creates modulations with a rate that is characterized by the fre-
quency difference between target and masker. When the target is centered within
the masker, the newly introduced modulations will have a rate comparable to those
already present within the masker alone and will therefore be difficult to detect.
When the target is sufficiently remote from the masker band, the modulations that
will be introduced due to addition of target will be of considerably higher rate than
those already present within the masker and may be much easier to detect. There
is evidence that the auditory system exhibits some frequency selectivity associated
with the processing of temporal envelope fluctuations, which led to the modulation
filterbank model proposed by Dau et al. [36].
In Fig. 10 results of the experiment by van de Par and Kohlrausch [35] are shown.
Thresholds for Gaussian noise (dashed lines) and low-noise noise (solid lines) maskers
are shown centered at 10 kHz, for various target-to-masker frequency offsets and two
masker bandwidths. As can be seen for the squares showing the 100-Hz wide maskers,
the low-noise noise thresholds (squares with solid lines) are roughly independent of
frequency offset. The Gaussian noise thresholds for the same bandwidth (squares
with dashed lines), however, show a clear dependence of frequency offset and thresh-
olds are generally higher than the low-noise noise thresholds, in line with the idea
that the inherent fluctuations in the Gaussian masker prohibit the detection of the
modulations introduced through the addition of the sinusoidal target signal. At larger
frequency offsets, however, the modulations introduced by the target signal become
higher in rate, and thresholds are relatively low. Note that the frequency offsets are
considerably lower than peripheral filter bandwidths. Thus the patterns of thresholds
observed in Fig. 10 are not likely to be influenced by peripheral filtering. For the
10-Hz maskers (circles), also for the low-noise noise (solid lines) there is a dependence
of frequency offset suggesting that there are inherent fluctuations in the low-noise
noise masker that influence masking at small frequency offsets. Note that for small
offsets the low-noise noise thresholds are considerably lower than the Gaussian noise
thresholds (circles with dashed lines). Again the dependence on frequency offset that
is observed here is a reflection of the processing of temporal envelope fluctuations
and not of spectral resolution.
3.1.4 Outlook
We have seen that the use of low-noise noise as masker does lead to different thresh-
olds compared to Gaussian noise. This supports the idea that temporal fluctuations
in Gaussian noise are a significant factor in auditory masking. Thus, low-noise noise
may be an interesting stimulus also in the future to study the contribution of envelope
fluctuations to masking.
For measurement techniques low-noise noise may also be of value because it is a
signal that couples a low crest factor with a continuous spectrum. Although in hear-
ing experiments, the bandwidth of low-noise noise is usually limited to at most that
of one critical bandwidth to prevent that peripheral filtering reintroduces fluctua-
tions in the envelope, for physical measurements this restriction may not exist and
wideband low-noise noise may be used to put maximum wideband power in a system
that somehow is restricted in its maximum amplitude.
3.2 Multiplied noise

While the generation of low-noise noise required intensive use of digital computers,
the noise described in this section, multiplied noise, made its appearance as psychoa-
coustic stimulus already in the analog period [37]. It was a very convenient way to
generate bandpass noises with tunable center frequency (see below) and these noises
were therefore quite useful in spectral masking experiments in which noise maskers
with variable center frequencies and steep spectral cutoffs were required [38,39]. The
reason to discuss this stimulus in the context of this chapter is, however, based on its
envelope properties, which allowed to test specific ideas about monaural and binaural
hearing.
3.2.1 Definition
Multiplied noise, sometimes also called multiplication, or regular zero-crossing noise,
is generated by directly multiplying a lowpass noise having a relatively low cutoff
frequency with a sinusoid of higher frequency. This operation is an example of

modulation with suppressed carrier. The resulting signal is a bandpass noise with
a center frequency equal to the frequency of the sinusoid. The bandwidth is given
by twice the cut-off frequency of the lowpass noise. By tuning the frequency of the
sinusoid, the center frequency of the multiplied noise is easily tunable, and such an
operation does not require the use of digital computers.
3.2.2 Acoustic properties and perceptual insights

Multiplied noise has regular zero crossings with a rate equal to its center frequency.
Its spectrum is symmetric around its center or carrier frequency: Above the carrier
frequency, the spectrum is identical to the spectrum of the original lowpass noise,
while the spectrum below the carrier is a mirrored version of this spectrum. Fur-
thermore, the envelope distribution of multiplied noise is also different from that of
Gaussian noise. While the envelope of Gaussian noise has a Rayleigh distribution,
the distribution of the envelope of multiplied noise correponds to the positive half of
a Gaussian distribution. This latter fact follows from the process of generation: the
envelope of multiplied noise corresponds to the absolute value of the original lowpass
noise time function. As a consequence, the envelope distribution of multiplied noise
has its highest value at zero. In contrast, for Gaussian noise, the probability of zero
envelope values is zero.
Due to the regular zero crossings, it is possible to add a sinusoid to multiplied noise
with a fixed finestructure phase relation to the masker, if the sinusoidal frequency
corresponds to the noise carrier frequency. If the sinusoid is added in phase, the
resulting signal has still the same zero crossings as the noise alone, and overall, the
envelope distribution is not much affected (see Fig. 11). When the sinusoidal signal
Figure 11. The envelope probability distribution is shown for a multiplied noise masker
alone (solid line) and for a multiplied noise masker plus signal added in phase (long-dashed
line), and with a fine-structure phase difference of π/2 (short-dashed line). The signal-to-
masker ratio is 25 dB. Reused with permission from Ref. [40]. Copyright 1998, Acoustical
Society of America.
Figure 12. Idealized

envelope spectra (dashed
curves) and averaged spec-
tra of Hilbert envelopes
(solid curves) of Gaussian
noise (upper panel), multi-
plied noise (middle panel),
and low-noise noise (lower
panel). Each averaged
curve results from 1000 1-s-
long realizations which were
randomly selected from a
10-s-long noise buffer and
then windowed with 50-
ms Hanning ramps. Note
that the power density is
plotted on a logarithmic
scale. Reused with permis-
sion from Ref. [41]. Copy-
right 1999, Acoustical Soci-
ety of America.
has a phase difference of 90 degrees relative to the masker, the noise zero crossings
appear when the sinusoidal waveform has its maxima (or minima). Therefore, in
the resulting signal the low envelope values disappear. The dashed line in Fig. 11
shows this strong effect on the envelope distribution of a multiplied noise by adding
a sinusoid with 90 degree phase difference.
Besides the distribution of the envelope values, also the envelope spectrum of
multiplied noise differs from that of Gaussian noise. Due to its symmetric power
spectrum, the envelope of ideal multiplied noise only has modulation frequencies
up to half its bandwidth, while for Gaussian noise, intrinsic modulation frequencies
range up to the whole bandwidth. Figure 12 shows envelope spectra, computed
from 1-s long realizations, for 50-Hz wide narrowband noises with three different
statistics: Gaussian noise (top panel), multiplied noise (middle panel) and low-noise
noise (bottom panel). These different envelope spectra have been of great use in
modelling amplitude modulation detection [41].
Due to the many properties in which multiplied noise differs from Gaussian noise,
it allows to investigate a great number of different psychoacoustic concepts. In the
following, we want to give three examples:
• Role of masker fluctuations in off-frequency masking.

• Influence of the intrinsic envelope fluctuations of a noise on modulation detec-
tion.
• Effects of masker-signal phase relation in monaural and binaural on-frequency
masking.
The spectral selectivity of the auditory system is often studied by using narrowband
maskers [42]. A problem for the interpretation of masking data arises, when, due to
the use of tonal masker, distortion products or temporal cues like beats influence the
detection process [43]. In order to avoid the introduction of such “false cues”, one
often uses narrowband noise maskers instead [44]. It is implicitely assumed that this
substituion has no other effect than eliminating the mentioned artifacts.
In a study by van der Heijden and Kohlrausch [45] this assumption underlying the
power-spectrum model of masking [32,38] was tested for five different narrowband
maskers with the same center frequency. The masker types were either a sinusoid, a
Gaussian noise or a multiplied noise. The two noise signals had bandwidths of either
20 or 100 Hz. The five maskers thus differed in the amount of envelope variations: The
sinuoid has a flat envelope, the two noises have envelopes with intrinsic fluctuations,
with the multiplied noise having deeper envelope minima (see Sect. 3.2.2). The rate
of fluctuation of the envelopes was another experimental parameter, because it is
lower for the 20-Hz than for the 100-Hz masker.
In the experiments, these maskers had a center frequency of 1.3 kHz and were used
to mask a sinusoidal test signal at 2 kHz. The masker levels were varied between
60 and 84 dB. Figure 13 shows the growth-of-masking functions for the five masker
Figure 13. Simultaneous growth-of-masking

functions measured with various narrow-band
maskers centered at 1.3 kHz. The target was
a 2-kHz tone. The five curves indicate the
results for five different maskers: a sinusoid
(open circles), a 100-Hz-wide Gaussian noise
(filled squares), a 20-Hz-wide Gaussian noise
(open squares), a 100-Hz-wide multiplied noise
(filled triangles), and a 20-Hz-wide multiplied
noise (open triangles). Data points measured
with 20-Hz-wide maskers are connected with
dashed lines. Averaged data of six subjects
are plotted; error bars indicate ± one standard
deviation across the values of the six subjects.
Reused with permission from Ref. [45]. Copy-
right 1995, Acoustical Society of America.
types. Higher values of the threshold indicate a stronger effect of the masker on the
audibility of the signal.
The data for the sinusoidal masker (circles, continuous line) indicate a highly
nonlinear growth of masking. When the masker level is changed by 12 dB from 66 to
78 dB SPL, the threshold increases by 30.3 dB, corresponding to a slope of 2.5 dB/dB.
The sinusoidal masker produces more masking than any of the other maskers. From
all noise maskers, the least masking is obtained for the 20-Hz-wide multiplied noise
masker (open triangles), while the strongest masking effect is seen for the 100-Hz-
wide Gaussian masker. These data show thus the effect of two stimulus parameters
on spectral masking: The more envelope minima occur in the masker, the lower
the masked threshold (compare the three open symbols in Fig. 13). And, given a
specific envelope distribution, faster fluctuations in the envelope, i. e., an increased
bandwidth, lead to higher thresholds (compare open and filled symbols of the same
type in Fig. 13).
Van der Heijden and Kohlrausch [45] emphasized in their conclusion the relevance
of noise statistics for the interpretation of experimental data: “In summary, our data
show that, particularly with high masker levels, attention should be paid to the ex-
act nature of narrow-band stimuli used to mask a target at a frequency above the
masker frequency [...] . These differences are by no means restricted to extremely
slowly fluctuating maskers. On the contrary, masker fluctuations are relevant under
many common experimental conditions, such as the ‘low-frequency tail’ of the psy-
choacoustic tuning curves. Unfortunately, in many published papers the influence of
the type of noise used as masker (particularly multiplication noise versus Gaussian
noise) has generally been neglected” ([45], p. 1806).
The envelope spectra of different noise types, shown in Fig. 12, suggested a critical
test of the concept of modulation filter banks, which was developed in the Ph. D.
thesis by Torsten Dau [36,46,47]. This concept provided a new view on modulation
detection, and emphasized the role of the intrinsic envelope fluctuations of the carrier
on the ability to detect sinusoidal amplitude modulations applied to this carrier.
While for noise carriers, modulation detection is limited by intrinsic modulations of
the carrier, for sinusoidal carriers, the limitation in detecting amplitude modulations
comes from intrinsic properties of the auditory system [48]. An important element in
this concept are modulation filters: a certain range of modulation frequencies falls
into the same modulation filter, and modulation detection is possible if the applied
modulation is sufficiently strong compared to the intrinsic modulations within the
modulation filter centered on the test modulation.
In such a framework, one would expect very different modulation detection thresh-
olds for noise carriers with different envelope spectra. For example, the modulation
spectrum of low-noise noise has very little energy at low modulation frequencies and
therefore, modulation detection should be much better at these modulation rates
than, e. g., for Gaussian or also for multiplied noise. Dau et al. [41] tested this
expectation by measuring modulation detection for the three noise types shown in
Fig. 12.
In the left panel of Fig. 14, experimentally determined modulation thresholds are
shown for the three noise types, all with a bandwidth of 50 Hz. First of all, we see
that Gaussian and multiplied noises have the highest thresholds at low modulation
Figure 14. The two panels show experimental data for modulation detection (left) and the
prediction of the modulation filterbank model developed in Ref. [36] (right). The symbols
indicate the three different noise types. GN: Gaussian noise; MN: multiplied noise; LNN:
low-noise noise. Reused with permission from Ref. [41]. Copyright 1999, Acoustical Society
of America.
frequencies, while thresholds decrease for these two carrier types towards modulation
frequencies corresponding to the carrier bandwidth of 50 Hz. In this range, thresholds
for multiplied noise are clearly lower, which is in line with the analysis of the envelope
spectra shown in Fig. 12. In contrast, the thresholds for low-noise noise are very
low at the lowest modulation frequencies and increase towards 50 Hz. This increase
directly resembles the increase in envelope power up to 50 Hz shown in Fig. 12.
The right panel shows the prediction of the modulation filterbank model that was
originally developed for prediction of data obtained with Gaussian noise only [36,47].
The resemblance between data and model prediction is strong evidence that the
basic ideas incorporated in the model capture properties of the hearing process in an
appropriate way.
The last example for the potential of multiplied noise comes from binaural hearing.
These experiments are based on the phase-locked interaction between masker and
test signal and the possibility to create masking conditions with differences only
in interaural time, or interaural level. These experiments will be discussed in the
following section which focusses on binaural experiments.
4 Stimuli for research on binaural hearing
One of the main areas of psychoacoustic research at the DPI was binaural hearing, in
which the particular consequences of differences between the acoustic waveforms at
the two ears are studied. Binaural hearing addresses issues such as localization and
lateralization of stimuli, and the wide area of binaural unmasking, the ability to detect
a source in the presence of other background sources with the same or different spatial
parameters. Binaural hearing requires that the signals from both ears are, somewhere
in the hearing pathway, compared for coincidences and differences. Because such an
interaction only takes place in neural centers far beyond the inner ear, it is very hard
to directly test models of binaural hearing. Therefore, the interplay between models
and the design of critical experiments is of particular relevance for advancing the
understanding of human hearing in this area.
Figure 15. The vector represen-

tation of an N0 Sπ stimulus. The
masker M and signal S are added in
the left ear with zero phase differ-
ence, resulting in the vector L, and
subtracted in the right ear, result-
ing in the vector R. Only interau-
ral intensity differences (IIDs) are
present in the resulting binaural
stimulus. Reused with permission
from Ref. [40]. Copyright 1998,
Many of the headphone-based binaural experiments have used the paradigm of

Binaural Masking Level Differences (BMLDs). BMLDs are indicators of a detection
advantage in a specific binaural condition, relative to a reference condition without
any interaural differences. Depending on signal parameters, this detection advantage
can amount to more than 20 dB and it is commonly thought that this aspect of
spatial hearing contributes to our ability to communicate in acoustically adverse
environments (sometimes indicated with the term ‘cocktail-party effect’).
In this section, two signals types are described which both were introduced to
evaluate specific model predictions about binaural unmasking.
4.1 Multiplied noise

As mentioned in the previous section, multiplied noise is a stochastic signal which has
regular zero crossings. By adding a sinusoidal test signal with a frequency equal to
the noise’s center frequency, one has control over the relative phase between masker
and signal, in a similar way as by adding two sinusoids with the same frequency. In
the context of binaural experiments, this property can be extended to so-called N0 Sπ
conditions, in which the Noise masker has no interaural difference while the Signal
has an interaural phase difference of π. When a Gaussian noise is used as masker
in such a condition, the addition of the sinusoidal signal introduces random fluctua-
tions in both Interaural Time Differences (ITDs) and Interaural Intensity Differences
(IIDs). With such a masker, it is not possible to asses the individual contributions
of ITDs and IIDs to the process of binaural unmasking. In the following, we will
describe how this is possible by using multiplied noise and sinusoidal signals with a
fixed phase relation to the masker’s waveform.
4.1.1 Acoustic properties and perceptual insights

In Fig. 15, the multiplied-noise masker M and a signal S are shown in vector represen-
tation. The two panels together show the right and the left signal for the condition
N0 Sπ . In the left panel, the angle between M and S is zero and, since the signal
Figure 16. The vector represen-

tation of an N0 Sπ stimulus. The
masker M and signal S are added in
the left ear with +90 degree phase
difference, resulting in the vector
L, and added in the right ear with
-90 degree phase difference, result-
ing in the vector R. Only inter-
aural time differences (ITDs) are
present in the resulting binaural
stimulus. Reused with permission
from Ref. [40]. Copyright 1998,
is interaurally out of phase, in the right panel, the phase difference between masker
and signal has to be π. The addition of the masker and signal in the left and the
right panels results in two vectors, L and R, which together represent the binaural
stimulus. The vectors L and R have in nearly all cases the same orientation. Only
when the masker envelope M is smaller than the one of the signal S, L and R point in
opposite directions. Basically, for this value of the masker-signal phase, the binaural
stimulus contains only IIDs which vary in time at a rate proportional to the masker
bandwidth.
In Fig. 16 a similar picture is shown as in Fig. 15, but now the masker M and
the signal S are added with phase differences of +90 and -90 degrees. The resulting
vectors L and R have the same length in all cases, only their orientation is different.
This vector diagram describes a condition with no interaural intensity differences,
and only time-varying interaural time differences.
These stimuli were used by van de Par and Kohlrausch [40] in a number of binaural
experiments. We will here only discuss one of the measurements, which reveals nicely,
how much ITDs and IIDs contribute to binaural unmasking at different frequencies.
Figure 17 shows the experimental results for conditions with either only interaural
intensity differences (circles) or only interaural time differences (squares). The dif-
ference between open and close symbols indicates the amount of binaural unmasking
(BMLD). Two results become clear from this graph: when the binaural stimulus
contains IIDs, the amount of binaural unmasking remains constant at all frequen-
cies. When the stimulus contains interaural time differences, the binaural detection
advantage is limited to low frequencies up to 1 kHz, and disappears completely at
frequencies of 2 kHz and above. The details of the transition between 1 and 2 kHz
seem to vary between the individual listeners. These data clearly demonstrate that
BMLDs do not generally decrease at high frequencies, as is sometimes stated, but
that the detection advantage is strongly linked to the cues that are available in the
stimulus. This aspect will be further elaborated in the next section about transposed
stimuli.
These results from binaural masking experiments agree very well with observations
about the detection of static IIDs and ITDs using sinusoidal signals. The sensitivity
Figure 17. Thresh-

olds for N0 S0 (open sym-
bols) and N0 Sπ (closed
symbols) are shown for
masker-signal phases of
0 degree (cricles) and
for phase values of 90
degrees (squares) as a
function of center fre-
quency. Thresholds were
measured at a masker
bandwidth of 25 Hz and
are shown for four sub-
jects in the lower four
panels. Average results
for the four subjects
are shown in the upper
panel. Reused with per-
mission from Ref. [40].
Copyright 1998, Acousti-
cal Society of America.
to changes in IID seems to be independent of center frequency and amounts to

about 1 dB [49]. The sensitivity to ITDs contained in the finestructure of the signal
decreases strongly above 1 kHz and is basically absent above 2 kHz [50,51].
4.2 Transposed stimuli

Transposed stimuli were introduced in the early 1990’s to investigate the reasons
why the BMLD for sinusoidal stimuli in broadband noise maskers decreased at high
frequencies [52–54]. For the N0 Sπ condition obtained with Gaussian noise, the BMLD
is about 15 dB at 500 Hz, while it is reduced to 2 to 3 dB at 2 kHz. Two mechanisms
were thought of to contribute to this reduction (see, e. g., Ref. [55]).
1. One contribution could come from the fact that auditory filters become wider at
higher frequencies. Therefore, the rate of fluctuations of interaural differences
at the output of an auditory filter will increase at higher frequencies. If one
assumes that the auditory system is limited in its ability to follow those rapid
changes, such an increased rate should have negative effects on the BMLD.
2. Another reason could lie in the loss of phase locking in the neural system at
higher frequencies. This does imply that at frequencies above about 1.5 kHz,
information about the finestructure of acoustic waveforms gets gradually lost.
In consequence, at high frequencies the binaural system has only access to
interaural differences in the envelope.
Figure 18. A scheme for the

generation of transposed stimuli.
The top part shows the genera-
tion of masker and signal wave-
forms, in this case for a bin-
aural condition with the masker
in phase and the signal inter-
aurally out of phase. In the
lower part, the low-frequency sig-
nals are halfwave rectified, low-
pass filtered and multiplied with
a high-frequency carrier. Reused
with permission from Ref. [52].
Copyright 1997, Acoustical Soci-
ety of America.
The question remained whether the differences in BMLDs at low and high frequen-
cies were primarily a consequence of the loss of fine-structure information, or whether
they reflected a structural difference of binaural processing between low and high fre-
quencies. In order to distinguish between these explanations, transposed stimuli with
a high carrier were introduced which contained in their envelope the same temporal
information as a related low-frequency stimulus in its fine structure.
4.2.1 Definition
A transposed stimulus is derived from a narrowband low-frequency stimulus by the

following operations. First, the low-frequency signal is halfwave rectified and lowpass
filtered. In Ref. [52], a second-order lowpass with a cut-off frequency of 500 Hz was
used. This signal is then used to modulate a high-frequency carrier, e. g., a sinusoid
at 4 kHz.
In Fig. 18, these steps are shown schematically for stimuli as they are used in a
masking experiment with adaptive adjustment of the signal level. In the top part
of the figure, the generation and mixing of the low-frequency masker and the low-
frequency signal are shown. The signal is added to the masker with a certain level,
which is controlled by the adaptive procedure and adjusted by the gain stage. De-
picted is the generation of an N0 Sπ stimulus, for which the signal is inverted in one
channel. After addition, the stimuli are ready for a standard low-frequency masking
experiment. The bottom part shows the additional steps needed for the generation
of a transposed stimulus.
Figure 19. An example of three different N0 Sπ stimuli before and after peripheral pro-
cessing. Panel A shows a 125-Hz stimulus, panel B shows a transposed stimulus at 4 kHz,
and panel C shows a standard 4-kHz stimulus. The intervals 0.0–0.1 s show the N0 masker
alone, the intervals 0.1–0.2 s show the N0 masker plus the Sπ signal at a signal-to-noise
ratio of -10 dB, the intervals 0.2–0.3 s show the masker after peripheral processing, and the
intervals 0.3–0.4 s show the combined masker and signal after peripheral processing. Reused
with permission from Ref. [52]. Copyright 1997, Acoustical Society of America.
4.2.2 Acoustic properties
The construction of transposed stimuli followed the idea to build high-frequency

signals that, after the initial stages of processing on the basilar membrane and the
hair cells, have the same amount of temporal information as they are present in a
standard low-frequency experiment. This property of transposed stimuli is depicted
in Fig. 19. In each of the three panels, the left half of each panel shows acoustic
waveforms as they are presented to subjects, and the right half, starting at 200 ms,
shows these stimuli after the first stages of peripheral processing. The first 100 ms
show the waveform of a noise masker alone, the section 100 to 200 ms contains the
noise masker plus an Sπ signal with a level 10 dB below the masker. The section 200
to 300 ms shows the masker after peripheral processing, and the last 100 ms show
masker plus signal after peripheral processing. Panel A contains signals centered at
125 Hz, and panel B contains transposed signals with a center frequency of 4 kHz,
derived from the low-frequency signal in panel A. Panel C finally shows standard
high-frequency stimuli centered at 4 kHz. In this case, the masker is a narrowband
noise centered at 4 kHz and the signal is a 4-kHz sinusoid.
By comparing panels A and B, we see that, indeed, after peripheral processing, the
low-frequency channel in panel A and the high-frequency channel in panel B contain
the same temporal information. In contrast, this information is strongly reduced in
a standard high-frequency condition as shown in panel C.
Figure 20 shows the spectrum of a transposed stimulus, derived from a narrowband
noise at 125 Hz. The spectral level is highest around the carrier frequency of 4 kHz.
Figure 20. The spectrum of a 25-Hz-wide 125-Hz transposed stimulus. Most of the stimulus
energy is around 4 kHz. The spectrum of the original low-frequency stimulus now occurs
at 4125 Hz and the mirror image of that spectrum is at 3875 Hz. Additional peaks in the
spectrum occur with spacings of 250 Hz. Reused with permission from Ref. [52]. Copyright
1997, Acoustical Society of America.
Spectral sidebands occur at spectral distances of 125, 250, 500, 750 etc. Hz. The
spectrum of the original noise band is contained in the two sidebands directly to the
left and the right of the carrier frequency.

In Ref. [52], a number of experiments using transposed stimuli are described. Ex-
periments were performed for transposed stimuli derived from 125-Hz and also from
250-Hz low-frequency conditions. Binaural conditions tested were N0 Sπ and Nπ S0 .
For comparisons, thresholds were also obtained in the low-frequency condition, from
which the transposed stimuli were derived, and for a standard high-frequency condi-
tion with a narrowband masker. Figure 21 shows experimental data for the condition
N0 Sπ for 125 Hz. Squares and circles indicate 125-Hz and 125-Hz transposed results,
while diamonds indicate results for a standard 4-kHz measurement. The mean data
show very clearly that 125-Hz and 125-Hz transposed stimuli give the same results,
not only in the size of the BMLD, but also in the dependence on the masker band-
width. In contrast, 4-kHz BMLDs in the standard condition are much lower.
This result is strong support for the idea that the major source of the decrease in
BMLDs at high frequencies lies in the effect of peripheral processing on the available
temporal information in the stimuli entering the binaural processing stage. If we
manage to present very similar amounts of temporal information at a frequency with
phase locking, e. g., 125 Hz and at a frequency without phase locking, e. g. 4 kHz, by
using our modulation technique, then very similar amounts of binaural unmasking
are measured. This observation thus supports an older hypothesis from Colburn and
Figure 21. The N0 Sπ BMLDs as a function of masker bandwidth for 125 Hz (circles),
125-Hz transposed (squares), and 4 kHz (diamonds). Five panels show data for individual
subjects; the panel at the bottom right shows the average of the five subjects. In the bottom
right panel, the three symbols with error bars indicate the averaged standard deviation of
the mean BMLD for the individual subjects for the three conditions. In all other panels
the three symbols with error bars indicate the averaged standard deviation of repeated
measurements. Reused with permission from Ref. [52]. Copyright 1997, Acoustical Society
of America.
Esquissaud [56] that the properties of the binaural processor are quite similar at low
and high frequencies.
4.2.4 Later developments

The concept of transposed stimuli has been taken up in a wide range of hearing stud-
ies. Bernstein and Trahiotis [57,58] used transposed stimuli to measure the extent of
laterality and the sensitivity to changes in interaural time differences, and compared
their results with those obtained for standard low- and high-frequency stimuli. In
line with the results found by van de Par and Kohlrausch [52], they observed great
similarity in their measures between low-frequency and transposed stimuli. Oxenham
et al. [59] used this type of stimuli in pitch perception experiments, in order to allow
a separation of place and timing information, which is usually coupled when using
sinusoidal signals.
Because the central assumption underlying the construction of transposed stimuli
is based on a “poor-man’s” model of processing in the peripheral parts of the hearing

system, the ultimate test for this concept had to come from physiological experiments.
Griffin et al. [60] used transposed stimuli to measure ITD sensitivity in high-frequency
neurons of the Inferior Colliculus of guinea pigs. Their study basically supported all
assumptions and findings made in the original paper by van de Par and Kohlrausch
[52] and these authors concluded: “Despite limitations in the temporal coding of
neurons to high-frequency sounds, the results presented here demonstrate that under
conditions in which binaural neurons receive appropriate spike patterns, sensitivity
to ITDs conveyed by high-frequency stimuli can be equivalent to that observed in
response to low-frequency stimuli. This suggests, as first conjectured by Colburn and
Esquissaud (1976), that mechanisms underlying ITD sensitivity in low- and high-
frequency channels of the auditory system are, to a first approximation, equivalent.”
([60], p. 3477).
The latest “application” of transposed stimuli comes from the field of audiology.
Long et al. [61] used a preprocessing based on the generation of transposed stim-
uli to test sensitivity to interaural differences in listeners wearing bilateral cochlear
implants. They found that all their four subjects showed significantly improved per-
formance when the signal was presented in a BMLD configuration, i. e. interaurally
out of phase. This observation thus supports the potential of providing temporal
information via the envelope of high-frequency carriers.
5 Conclusion
In this chapter, we have described a number of signal types with specific properties in
their phase characteristics, their finestructure or their envelope, which have allowed
detailed tests of ideas and concepts related to human hearing. In the text, we have
concentrated on the acoustic properties and the consequential perceptual insights.
But it also needs to be pointed out that the ability to generate these stimuli, and
to develop advanced time-domain hearing models, depended heavily on the highly
flexible and nearly bug-free software package that was created in the hearing groups
at the DPI throughout the 1980’s with contributions from many group members.
SI, Signal processing Interactive, was the name for a program concept that allowed
to work with digital signals like a pocket calculator works with numbers. In our
opinion, the possibilities offered by this package were at least as essential for the
scientific progress as were the growing insights in psychoacoustics and physiology.
The choice of signal types in this chapter is certainly biased towards those exam-
ples, to which we have ourselves contributed. The great potential of these stimulus
types lies in the possibility to apply them easily in physiological experiments, and
to use them as input to time-domain models which allow the processing of arbi-
trary signal waveforms [36,47,62–66]. This close interplay between psychoacoustics,
physiology and modeling is one of the central themes of a conference series, the
International Symposia on Hearing, which was initiated in 1969 by, among others,
Manfred R. Schroeder and is since then organized every three years. This symposium
never took place in Göttingen, but it can be seen as a late echo of the psychoacoustic
research at the DPI that two recent editions of these symposia, the one in 2000 [67]
and the one in 2006 [68], were co-organized by scientists who received their initial
academic training and were shaped in their scientific interests at the DPI.
Acknowledgements. The work described in this chapter reflects the close and fruitful
cooperations that I (AK) had over the past more than 25 years with friends and colleagues
at the DPI in Göttingen and later on in Eindhoven, where I was joined by SvdP in 1993.
We both would like to thank all our colleagues for the creative atmosphere and great fun,
which helped to generate some interesting scientific ideas. A part of this atmosphere was
in 1991 exported to Eindhoven, and as can be seen from the reference list, this has become
a similarly fruitful period. Finally, we would like to thank the senior staff at the DPI, in
particular Udo Kaatze, for taking the initiative to publish this book.
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Sound absorption, sound amplification, and

flow control in ducts with compliant walls
D. Ronneberger and M. Jüschke
Drittes Physikalisches Institut, University of Göttingen
Abstract. Efficient damping of narrow-band noise in ducts is commonly achieved with

a lining which has a resonance tuned to the frequency band of the noise. However, with
superimposed mean flow and with high quality factors of the resonators, large sound am-
plification (up to 30 dB) is observed even if only a short section (less than two diameters
long) of the circular duct is provided with the lining. Jointly with the sound amplification, a
considerable increase of the static pressure drop (by more than 100 % at high sound pressure
amplitudes) along the lined duct section is observed. The most important experimental re-
sults will be reviewed and the physical mechanisms behind these phenomena are thoroughly
discussed. The theoretical investigation of the wave propagation and of the stability of the
flow within the resonator section happens to be an unexpectedly high challenge. The var-
ious common approaches based on mode decomposition and axial homogeneity of the flow
result in dispersion relations which largely diverge from the experimental results. While
a convective instability has been observed to cause the considered phenomena, the flow is
predicted to be subject to absolute instability even if the interaction between the coherent
and the turbulent instability waves are included by a first approximation. So we conjecture
that the spatial development of the mean flow which for its part depends on the spatial
development of the instability waves has to be taken into account.
1 Introduction
Sound propagation in channels plays an important role in many technical prob-

lems, e. g. when noise from machines or from the outside is propagated through
air-conditioning duct systems or when the noise from turbofans is to be reduced.
Duct acoustics is also an obligatory subject in lectures on technical acoustics, and
the design of sound absorbing ducts is a problem, which is treated typically in engi-
neering sciences. So, why – the reader might ask – are we concerned with this subject
in a Physics Institute since many years? In fact, it is more than fifty years ago that
Fridolin Mechel, a student of Erwin Meyer at that time, was instructed to investigate
the performance of acoustically treated ducts that carry a mean flow. Only a few
years earlier, Lighthill [1] had published his famous paper on the sound production
in unsteady flows which has triggered extensive research work in aero-acoustics.
74 D. Ronneberger et al.
Mechel found out that the sound attenuation in a channel the wall of which is
equipped with periodically spaced Helmholtz resonators is considerably reduced in
the presence of mean flow and may even be turned into sound amplification at cer-
tain frequencies [2]. The relation between these frequencies, the flow velocity and
the spacing of the resonators revealed a close analogy between the observed sound
amplification and the amplification of electromagnetic waves in the so called trav-
elling wave tube which exploits the interaction between the electromagnetic wave
and an electron beam via a periodic structure [3]. However, the mechanism itself
by which mean-flow energy is converted to sound energy remained unclear. Besides
the sound amplification the excitation of loud tones was observed by Mechel when
the resonators were undamped. The latter phenomenon is known also from isolated
resonators the openings of which are exposed to grazing flow. A salient example of
such self-excited pressure oscillations has occurred in a gas transport system where
a pair of pipes with closed valves at the end branch off the main pipe in opposite
directions. The pressure amplitudes were so large that the flow velocity had to be
reduced in order to maintain safe operating conditions [4].
The phenomena observed by Mechel are two examples of aero-acoustic instabilities
which are based on the so called Kelvin-Helmholtz instability of vortex sheets. Such
vortex sheets form at the interface between the Helmholtz resonators and the interior
of the flow duct. While the sound amplification and the self-excited tones are closely
related to the inhomogeneity of the channel, namely to the spacing of the resonators
and maybe to the width of their openings, similar phenomena are also caused by
homogeneous compliant walls that bound internal and external flows.
The interest in the stability of fluid flow along compliant walls has been stimulated
by the experiments which M. O. Kramer had performed to explain Gray’s paradox:
Gray [5], wondering about the fast swimming speed of some dolphin species, had
calculated that the dolphin’s muscles had to deliver a multiple of the mechanical
power that is produced by the muscles of all other mammals unless the dolphins
are able to control the flow in the boundary layer around their body to remain
laminar. Kramer [6] speculated that the particular mechanical properties of the
dolphin’s skin stabilize the flow, and in fact, with special compliant coatings of his test
bodies he obtained an appreciable drag force reduction. However trials to reproduce
these spectacular results in other laboratories have failed. The seminal theoretical
investigation by Benjamin [7] and an impressive number of subsequent investigations
some of which are still in progress have nevertheless shown that the compliance of the
wall has indeed a strong effect on the stability of the flow boundary layer (see, e. g.,
Refs. [8,9]). The flow is destabilized in most cases because of a whole zoo of instability
modes that arise by the compliance of the wall, but under special circumstances a
stabilization can be achieved, and there is little doubt meanwhile that the onset of
turbulence can be delayed by appropriate coating of the wall.
In connection with sound propagation in acoustically treated flow ducts the exis-
tence of the mentioned kind of instability has first been noted in theoretical stud-
ies [10–16], however, there was no indication that these modes really exist in the
turbulent environment of practical flow situations. Nevertheless, the excitation of in-
stability modes at the leading edge of the compliant wall was taken into account, and
it was assumed that the growing instability modes loose their coherence by nonlinear
Sound absorption, sound amplification, and flow control in ducts 75

cavity depth 75 mm

metal screen

length

87.5 mm
diameter 50 mm
cavities
(width 5 mm) cavity walls
(thickness 0.5 mm)
Figure 1. Dimensions of the mainly studied lining composed of 16 identical cavities: Reso-
nance frequencies: First radial mode: 840 Hz, second radial mode: 3294 Hz, first azimuthal
mode: 1113 Hz.
effects after some travelling distance and finally increase the turbulence of the flow.
So the main issue of these theoretical studies was the scattering of incoming sound
waves at the leading and possibly at the trailing edge of the compliant wall. Möhring
and Eversman [12] and Quinn and Howe [14] controversially discussed the possibility
that mean-flow energy can be converted to acoustic energy at the edges of lossless
liners depending on the choice of the so called unsteady Kutta condition;while the
real flow is approximated by potential flow, the Kutta condition is an assumption
about the singularity of the potential at the edge (see Ref. [17]).
This discussion and a theoretical study by Koch and Möhring [13] who also high-
light the influence of the Kutta condition on the amplitudes of the scattered sound
waves was a reason to start an experimental investigation which should decide on the
adequate choice of the Kutta condition. For this purpose a circular hard-walled flow
duct was constructed to include a short section with a compliant wall. The lining
was designed to have a well defined low-loss acoustic admittance. In addition, the
response of the wall displacement to the pressure field should be as local as possible.
Figure 1 shows a sequence of narrow annular cavities which meet these requirements
and which are connected to the interior of the flow duct through fine-meshed metal
screens to prevent the turbulent eddies to penetrate into the cavities.
The first experimental results however revealed that the original aim of the study
was hardly reachable because the wave propagation in the lined duct section exhibits
some significant differences to the assumptions which have been made in [12–14] and
which had been anticipated to guide the evaluation of our experimental results [18,19].
So the study of the unsteady Kutta condition, which basically is a study of the dy-
namics of flow separation, was continued with other flow geometries and by other
means [20–24], and as a kind of compensation, the flow through the lined duct sec-
tion attracted our attention by a rather unexpected sound amplification that largely
differed from the phenomenon observed and described by Mechel [2,3], and even more
unexpectedly the static pressure drop along the lined duct section exhibited a strong
40
power spectral density

a 1
A
db
20
10 A2
0
b B1
0.3 A1 A2 A3
(flow velocity) / (speed of sound)
0.2
0.1
0 10 20 30 dB 40
c 1 2
0.3 A A
0.2
D
0.1
0 1 2 3 4
frequency [kHz]
Figure 2. Power spectral density (psd) of the pressure downstream and upstream of the
resonator section: (a) U /c = 0.27, downstream; (b) difference to the median of the dis-
tribution of the psd, as a function of the flow velocity, downstream; (c) same as (b), but
upstream.
dependence on the incident sound amplitude [25–28]. These phenomena have mean-
while turned out to be the effect of a strong seemingly convective instability of the
turbulent flow in the lined duct section. Various experimental observations and some
qualitative explanations of the phenomena will be presented in Sects. 2 and 3 while
the attempts and the difficulties to understand the instability will be discussed in
Sect. 4.
2 Experimental observations
2.1 Axisymmetric mode

2.1.1 Turbulent pressure fluctuations, sound transmission and static pressure drop
The sound amplification and the acoustic influence on the static pressure occur at
frequencies slightly above the first radial resonance frequency of the cavities. In
contrast to the original study with frequencies well below the resonance frequency,
most of the experiments to be reviewed in the following have therefore been performed
50
12.5
10 16
gap width = 5 mm
40
peak amplitude [dB]

13
30
10 cavities
20
8
10
6
1.6
peak frequency [kHz]
1.4
6 cavities
8
10
5 mm 10 12.5
1.2
13 16
0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35

(flow velocity) / (speed of sound)
Figure 3. Amplitude and mid-frequency of the A1 -peak of Fig. 2(b) as functions of the flow
velocity. The number of cavities has been varied while the full cross-section of the pipe was
open to the flow (blue and black solid curves, denoted by the number of cavities), and the
cross-section of the duct was reduced by insertion of a coaxial cylindrical body while the
number of cavities (16) remained constant (red dashed curves, denoted by the gap width
between the central body and the duct wall).
with a low resonance frequency (840 Hz) corresponding to the dimensions of the
cavities that are shown in Fig. 1. The lowest cut-on frequency of higher-order modes
in the rigid pipes upstream and downstream of the resonator section is 4 kHz. So
for frequencies in the order of the resonance frequency all higher-order modes are
evanescent and only the fundamental axisymmetric mode can propagate.
We first became aware of the sound amplification by some faint narrow-band whis-
pering superimposed on the flow noise in the laboratory. The pressure spectra (Fig. 2)
measured far upstream and far downstream of the resonator section reveal that this
sound originates in the resonator section and is radiated mainly in the direction of
the flow. The sample spectrum in Fig. 2(a) shows a few prominent peaks on top of
an otherwise rather constant power spectral density, and the development of these
peaks with increasing flow velocity† U is depicted in Figs. 2(b) and (c) where the
†
Although the compressibility of the air is not essential for the considered phenomena,
the average of the flow velocity over the cross-sectional area of the pipe U is normalized to
U/c = 0.3
U/c = 0.25
10
coefficient
U/c = 0.2
1
acoustic transmission
|t |
U/c = 0.15
+
0.1
U/c = 0.1
U/c = 0
0.01
0.001
0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4
frequency[kHz]
frequency [kHz]
Figure 4. Acoustic transmission coefficient of the unmodified resonator section as functions

of the freqency for various flow velocities. The incident sound wave travels in the direction
of flow. Resonance frequency: 840 Hz.
median of the distribution of the power spectral density (psd) is taken as 0 dB. The
enhancement of the psd at low frequencies is not caused by the resonator section but
is due to the internal noise of the flow facility.
The most prominent peak in Fig. 2(a) is marked by A1 . The amplitude of this
peak becomes very large at high flow velocities so that higher harmonics (A2 and A3 )
appear in the spectra. At these high flow velocities the pressure fluctuations are also
radiated to the opposite direction of flow (1A and 2A in Fig. 2(c)). The peak B1 in
Fig. 2(b) slightly above the frequency of the second radial resonance of the cavities
(3.3 kHz) is possibly based on the same mechanism as the peak A1 , while the peak D
in Fig. 2(c) has been identified by Brandes [29,30] to be the result of another type of
instability that will be reconsidered in Sect. 4.1.5.
The amplitude and the mid-frequency of the A1 -peak are plotted as functions of
the flow velocity in Fig. 3 for different geometric parameters of the resonator section.
While the dimensions of the cavity remain unmodified, the number of cavities is
varied, and besides the circular duct cross-section also various annular cross-sections
have been investigated characterized by the width of the annular gap between a cen-
tral cylindrical body and the pipe wall. The peak frequencies continuously increase
when the flow velocity is increased except for an interval between 1200 Hz and 1260 Hz
which is always skipped. The jump of the frequency occurs at U jump /c ≈ 0.35 for the
the sound speed if definite values are given, however the term ‘Mach number’ is avoided;
in fact we have not succeeded in finding an adequate and practical reference speed which
remains constant during a typical experiment and does not depend, e. g., on the frequency
or the acoustical admittance of the lining.
0.07
0.25
0.06 0.2 0.3
0.05 0.15
0.04 U/c = 0.1

R / L ⋅ ∆p ac / p dyn
dyn
ac
0.03
0.02
0.01
−0.01
0.8 0.9 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4
1.4
frequency [kHz]
Figure 5. Sound-induced static pressure drop ∆pac along the unmodified resonator section
as a function of the frequency with various flow velocities. The average pressure gradient
∆pac /L within the resonator section is normalized with the dynamic pressure per radius
pdyn /R.
unmodified resonator section depicted in Fig. 1, and a hysteresis is associated with

the jump of the frequency (black curve in Fig. 3). The maximum peak amplitudes are
reached slightly below U jump which strongly depends on the geometric parameters of
the resonator section.
Besides the pressure spectra the sound transmission through the lined duct sec-
tion has been investigated. A multi-microphone method with two independent sound
fields has been used [31] for this purpose. Figure 4 shows the transmission coefficient
for the sound propagating in the mean flow direction. At frequencies close to the res-
onance frequency and with U = 0 the sound transmission is very effectively blocked,
and this blockage becomes even more effective by mean flow in the opposite direction
of the sound propagation (not shown in Fig. 4). However, with mean flow in the
direction of sound propagation, the transmission coefficient considerably increases
and becomes even much greater than unity, at high flow velocities. Considering the
dependency on the freqency and on the flow velocity, obvious agreement is found
between the sound amplification and the spectral peak (A1 ) downstream of the res-
onator section. Therefore we conclude that the A1 -peak is caused by the amplification
of the axisymmetric component of the turbulent pressure fluctuations that enter the
lined duct section.
In conjunction with the sound amplification Krause [25] and Brandes [26,29] have
observed an increase of the static pressure drop along the lined duct section, i. e.
an increase of the mean wall shear stress in the resonator section. The dependency
of the sound-induced pressure drop on the frequency is plotted in Fig. 5 for various
Figure 6. Amplitude and phase of the pressure oscillation close to the wall of the unmod-
ified resonator section as functions of the axial coordinate; the pressure field was excited
by an incident sound wave. The flow velocity U was varied and the respective frequency f
was adjusted to the maximum of the transmission coefficient for each flow velocity. From
Ref. [29].
flow velocities, and the sound was introduced into the first cavity by means of three
loudspeakers, in this experiment. The greatest effect is obtained slightly above the
frequency of maximum sound amplification. In fact, the pressure drop and the sound
transmission exhibit a very similar dependency on the frequency and the flow velocity.
These phenomena have recently been observed also by Aurégan et al. [32] with cavities
which are much narrower than in our experiment; the ceramic skeleton of a catalytic
converter has been used by these authors for that purpose.
The resonator section can be used as a valve which is contolled by the ampli-
tude of superimposed sound and the response time of which (a few milliseconds) is
given by the width of the frequency interval of sound amplification. Lange and Ron-
neberger [27] have demonstrated this possibility by active suppression of the sound
transmission through the resonator section at frequencies up to ca. 200 Hz. For this
purpose the pressure drop was adjusted to exactly follow the sound pressure in front
Figure 7. Pressure amplitude close to the wall of the unmodified resonator section with
different amplitudes of the incident sound wave. U /c = 0.2, f=1033 Hz. From Ref. [29].
of the resonator section. The relatively involved relation between the far upstream
measured signal of the broad-band noise that was to be cancelled and the necessary
amplitude of the controlling sound signal was determined and adjusted by means of
an adaptive filter.
2.1.2 Pressure amplitude and static pressure in the resonator section

Considering the various types of instability in flow ducts with compliant walls, as
mentioned in the introduction, we have come to the conclusion that the sound am-
plification is caused by such an instability. We assume that a convective instability
mode is excited by the incident sound at the leading edge of the resonator section.
The amplitude grows while the instability wave propagates through the lined duct
section, and from the large pressure oscillation at the end of the lined duct section
a large-amplitude sound wave is radiated into the rigid duct which is connected to
the rear of the resonator section. The spatial distribution of the pressure oscillation
in the resonator section supports this hypothesis. First of all it turns out that the
pressure field is composed of various modes which differ by the wavenumber and by
the radial dependence of the pressure. So rather involved interference patterns may
occur, e. g. the axial gradient of the phase may be positive along the axis of the duct
and be negative along the wall. The axial distributions depicted in the Figures 6 – 8
can be considered to be comparatively clear. Summarizing we arrive at the following
conclusions [29,33]:
(i) Besides evanescent modes which are excited at the ends of the resonator section
the pressure field contains a wave which exhibits all properties of an instability mode.
(ii) The phase velocity of the instability wave is O(U /2).
(iii) The parameters that determine the propagation of the instability mode strongly
vary along the axial coordinate; in particular the rate of exponential growth of the
wave decreases with the travelling distance and may even become negative (Fig. 8
Figure 8. Pressure amplitude (a) and sound-induced static pressure decrease (b) within
a resonator section consisting of 32 cavities with the first radial resonance at 2.94 kHz.
The static pressure decrease is normalized to the pressure drop without sound irradiation
(24 mbar). From Ref. [29].
shows an example). In such cases the acoustic transmission coefficient decreases

when the length of the lined duct section is further increased, and since the spatial
development of the instability wave depends on the frequency, the maximum of the
transmission coefficient is reached at different frequencies for different lengths of the
lined duct section (the frequency decreased when the length is increased).
(iv) The amplitude of the instability wave saturates at high amplitudes of the incident
sound wave (see Fig. 7). So also the transmission coefficient decreases if a certain
sound amplitude is exceeded.
Besides the oscillating part of the pressure also the sound-induced decrease of the
static pressure was measured in several cases, and a close relationship between both
the components of the pressures has been found:
(i) While the pressure amplitude increases as a function of the axial coordinate, the
static pressure decreases, and vice versa (Fig. 8).
(ii) It may even happen at high sound frequencies that the static pressure increases
and that the flow resistance of the resonator section decreases with sound irradiation.
(iii) While the sound amplitude increases, the pressure drop becomes noticeable only
when the transmission coefficient starts to decrease.
0.32
0.3 (a) (b)

(pressure drop) / (dynamic pressure)
0.28
0.26
0.24
0.22
0.2
0.18
0.16
0.14
0.12
0.12 0.14 0.16 0.18 0.2 0.22 0.24 0.12 0.14 0.16 0.18 0.2 0.22 0.24 0.26 0.28
argument of function DP in Eq. (1)
Figure 9. Relation between the pressure drop and the pressure amplitude at the rear end
of the resonator section according to Eq. (1). (a) m = 0; pac = transmitted sound pressure
amplitude; U /c = 0.2 (thin curves), frequencies: 907 Hz (black, dash-dotted), 1007 Hz (red,
solid), 1087 Hz (green, dashed); U /c = 0.25 (thick curves), frequencies: 1007 Hz (black,
dash-dotted), 1087 Hz (red, solid), 1127 Hz (green, dashed). (b) m = 1, pac = pressure
amplitude in the backmost cavity; U /c = 0.2 (thin curves), frequencies: 1207 Hz (red,
solid), 1307 Hz (green, dashed); U /c = 0.25 (thick curve), frequency: 1207 Hz (red, solid).
(iv) The pressure drop ∆p along the lined duct section and the amplitude pac of the
transmitted sound wave are related by
( 2 2 )
∆p ptb κ(f, U ) · pac
= DP (U ) + , (1)
pdyn pdyn pdyn
wherein pdyn is the dynamic pressure. The quantities ptb (U ) and κ(f, U ) are fitted
to the experimental data except for a free common factor which is adapted such
that DP{· · ·} becomes the identity function for small sound pressure amplitudes;
κ(f, U ) increases with increasing frequency and with decreasing flow velocity. As
seen from Fig. 9(a), DP{· · ·} does not differ very much from the identity function
also at large sound amplitudes. However, only a few experimental data were suited
for this evaluation, so the universality of DP{· · ·} may be questioned. In fact, when
higher-order mode sound irradiation (see next Section) is applied to the resonator
section, strongly nonlinear and all but universal relations are found between ∆p and
p2ac . Fig. 9(b) shows several examples where pac is the pressure amplitude in the
backmost cavity of the resonator section.
a 1 2 3 4 dB
A A A A
0.3 110
0.2 C
(flow velocity) / (speed of sound) 00
0.1 −10
−1
b 1.0
0.3
0.2 0.5
0.1
0
c
0.3
−0.5
0.2
0.1 −1.0
0 1 2 3 4 5
frequency [kHz]
Figure 10. Power spectral density and coherence of the pressure in the backmost cavity
of the unmodified resonator section plotted as a function of the frequency and of the flow
velocity. (a) power spectral density (normalized to the background spectrum); (b) coherence
between two locations the azimuthal coordinates of which differ by ∆ϕ = 180o ; (c) like (b)
with ∆ϕ = 120o .
2.2 Higher-order modes

Regarding the possible technical application of the sound-induced static pressure
drop, the excitation and the effect of higher-order modes have been studied. It is an-
ticipated that some of these propagate in the resonator section, but are evanescent in
the rigid ducts so that the mostly unwelcome propagation of the amplified controlling
sound is suppressed. We are particularly interested in circumferential modes which
are easier to handle than radial modes. Then the amplitudes of the flow velocity and
the pressure depend on the azimuthal coordinate ϕ according to (û, v̂, p̂) ∼ exp(imϕ)
wherein m is the azimuthal wavenumber and |m| is the azimuthal order of the mode.
Because of the evanescence of the considered modes we have to abandon the ra-
diated pressure fluctuations and the acoustic transmission coefficient as sources of
information in this study; instead we analyze the pressure in the backmost cavity.
The spectum of the pressure is more complex, and it contains more peaks than the
radiated pressure spectra shown in Fig. 2; in addition the ‘background spectrum’ on
top of which the peaks are observed exhibits a stronger dependency on the frequency
than the radiated pressure. The background spectrum was therefore approximated
10
power spectral density

a
n= 0 0 1 0 01 01 20 1 20
.1 m= 1 2 0 3 41 52 06 3 17
1
0.5
0
coherence function
−0.5
b
−1
1
0.5
−0.5
c
−1
0 1 2 3 4 5
frequency [kHz]
Figure 11. Average of the data of Fig. 10 over 0.13 ≤ U /c ≤ 0.25. The cut-on frequencies
of the various modes in the resonator section are marked on the bottom of Fig. (a) where
the radial order of the modes are denoted by n, and the expected coherence functions (see
text) are shown as dashed curves in Figs. (b) and (c).
by a polynomial which was fitted to the logarithm of the power spectral density
(psd), and only the difference between the actual psd and this ‘background spec-
trum’ is presented as a function of the frequency and the flow velocity in figure 10a.
As in Fig. 2(b) the peaks A1 , A2 , and A3 are the the most outstanding ones also in
Fig. 10(a) where the fourth harmonic A4 is included.
In addition quite a few less prominent peaks appear in Fig. 10(a) which have no
correspondence in Fig. 2(b). These peaks are therefore supposed to originate from
higher-order modes which are evanescent in the rigid pipes. With one exception
(C), the mid-frequencies of the additional peaks do not depend on the flow velocity.
So the clearness of these peaks can be increased by averaging the spectra over a
range U /c = 0.13 · · · 0.25 of flow velocities, within which the less prominent peaks
more or less dominate over the A-peaks. The average is shown in Fig. 11(a), and
moreover the cut-on frequencies of the higher-order modes in the resonator section
are marked on the frequency axis; the cut-on frequencies are only weakly dependent
on the flow velocity and therefore have been computed for air at rest. A steep increase
of the power spectral density is found at the low-order cut-on frequencies. So it is
conjectured that the contribution to the pressure fluctuations by a definite mode is
particularly large at frequencies just above the respective cut-on frequency.
0.06
0.25
0.05
U/c = 0.1
0.3
0.04 0.15
R / L ⋅ ∆pac/ pdyn
0.03 0.2
0.02
0.01
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4

frequency [kHz]
Figure 12. Increase of the pressure drop along the lined duct section effected by acoustical
excitation of the m = 1 mode, as a function of the frequency and for various flow velocities.
This hypothesis is supported by the power cross-spectral density between loca-

tions the azimuthal coordinates of which differ by ∆ϕ = 180o and by ∆ϕ = 120o ,
respectively. First of all, the imaginary parts of the cross-spectra are expected to
vanish, since otherwise one of the two directions of rotation of the constituent modes
(m positive or negative) would be preferred. Nevertheless, in a few cases significant
imaginary parts of the power cross-spectral density are encountered, the origin of
which was not pursued, however. Instead the imaginary parts are simply ignored
in the following. If the modes p̂m exp(imϕ) contained in the pressure field p̂(ϕ) are
incoherent (what is to be expected) we obtain
∞
X
<hp̂(ϕ1 )p̂∗ (ϕ2 )i = h|p̂0 |2 i + (h|p̂m |2 i + h|p̂−m |2 i) cos[m(ϕ1 − ϕ2 )] (2)
m=1
wherein p̂(ϕ) is the Fourier transform of one possible pressure signal measured at the
azimuthal location ϕ, and h· · ·i is the average over all possible realizations. So all
the modes with identical order |m| contribute to the real part of the cross-spectrum
in proportion to their mean square amplitudes.
The real part of the coherence function, i. e. the real part of the ratio between
the power cross-spectral and (auto-)spectral densities is plotted as a function of the
flow velocity in Figs. 10(b) and (c) for ∆ϕ = 180o and ∆ϕ = 120o , respectively. Also
the average of the coherence function over the flow velocity (U /c = 0.13 · · · 0.25) was
computed and was depicted in Figs. 11(b) and (c) together with coherence functions
computed according to Eq. (2) with the assumption that the pressure field consists of
one single mode namely the one which belongs to the nearest lower cut-on frequency,
in each case. Obviously this assumption is not too bad, at least for low-order modes.
The conspicuous low-frequency peaks (C) in Fig. 10(a) the mid-frequencies of which
are proportional to the flow velocity and which are absent in Fig. 2(b), are obviously
caused by an antisymmetric pressure distribution according to Figs. 10(b) and (c).
With the assumption that this pressure distribution is due to a single mode |m| we
infer from the measured coherence functions that cos(m·180o ) < 0 and cos(m·120o ) <
0, according to Eq. (2), so that |m| = 1, or |m| = 5, 7, · · · . In Figs. 11(b) and (c)
this mode manifests itself by the broad dips at low frequencies. There are some
indications (Sect. 4.1.2) that the considered mode is a hydrodynamic mode which
cannot exist but with non-zero mean flow.
The effect of the higher-order modes on the pressure drop was investigated only
with |m| = 1. In order to excite this mode, three loudspeakers with an azimuthal
spacing of 120o and driven at 120o phase difference were connected to the first cavity
of the resonator section. Also the axisymmetric mode m = 0 can be excited by this
means, namely by driving the loudspeakers with identical phases. First of all it turns
out that these acoustically excited modes, particularly m = 1, reach the backmost
cavity only within certain frequency bands. For frequencies up to ca. 2 kHz, these
bands more or less coincide with the frequency bands within which the coherence
function (∆ϕ = 180o , Fig. 10(b)) is negative, respectively positive when the m = 0
mode is propagated through the resonator section. There is however some overlap
between the respective pass-bands, thus, e. g., both the modes propagate within the
band denoted by C in Fig. 10.
As expected, the static pressure can be noticeably influenced by the m = 1 mode
only within the pass-bands of this mode. This is shown in Fig. 12 for various flow
velocities. With low flow velocities the low-frequency hydrodynamic mode C is more
effective than the mode which propagates above the first acoustical cut-on frequency
of the |m| = 1 modes, however for U /c > 0.2 the pressure drop is higher with this
‘acoustical’ |m| = 1 mode. Interestingly, this latter mode is effective in practically
the same freqency range as the m = 0 mode the effects of which have been denoted
by A and have been described in the previous Section 2.1. A comparison between
the Figures 5 and 12 shows that nearly the same acoustically induced pressure drop
is achieved with both these modes. A closer inspection reveals that some kind of
interference seems to occur between the modes around 1.2 kHz: the pressure drop is
high with the m = 1 mode when it is low with the m = 0 mode and vice versa.
3 Physical mechanisms
3.1 Interaction between the mean and the fluctuating parts of the flow
3.1.1 Momentum transport by flow oscillations and stability of the mean flow
In order to study the physical mechanisms behind the sound amplification and the
acoustical control of the static pressure, we describe the interaction between the
mean and the fluctuating parts of the flow in the common way: the flow velocity
u = (u, v, w)t , the pressure p, and the density of mass ρ are decomposed into mean
and fluctuating parts, u = u + u0 , p = p + p0 , ρ = ρ + ρ0 , and are substituted in the
Navier Stokes equation (conservation of momentum). Then the same type of average,
e. g. temporal, is taken of the equation, as was applied in the decomposition of the

field quantities. As a result the mean transport of momentum which is described by
the tensor ρuut is composed of two parts: ρuut = ρ u0 u0 t + ρ u u t wherein the
fluctuation of the density is disregarded. So the fluctuation of the velocity contributes
to the mean transport of momentum by the covariance of the velocity components.
The term −ρ u0 u0 t is also known as Reynolds stress tensor because it contributes to
the balance of forces between the volume elements in the same way as the pressure
and the viscous friction. Particularly the Reynolds shear stress τ 00 := −ρ u0 v 0 which
exceeds the viscous shear stress τ µ := µ ∂ u/∂y by orders of magnitude in turbulent
flow, plays the dominant role in the development of the mean flow profile.
On the other hand, the mean velocity profile is crucial to the development of the
Reynolds tensor. To understand this we consider the hypothetical case that the
fluctuating part of the flow consists of a single mode of a small-amplitude oscillation
so that the Navier Stokes equation can be linearized. Additionally we confine our
consideration to the simple incompressible flow u = [U (y), 0, 0]t in a 2D channel
where we can use the wave ansatz
{u0 , v 0 , p0 }(x, y, t) = {û, v̂, p̂}(y) · exp[i(αx − ωt)] (3)
(with angular frequency ω, wavenumber α, axial and wall-normal space coordinates

x and y). Then the Orr-Sommerfeld equation is obtained for the amplitude v̂(y) of
the wall-normal component of the flow velocity. This is a fourth-order differential
equation which reduces to the second order Rayleigh equation if the effects of viscosity
are disregarded:
d2 v̂ d2 U/dy 2

2 i dv̂ i dU
= α + · v̂ ; û = ; p̂ = ρ v̂ − i(ω − αU )ρû (4)
dy 2 U − ω/α α dy α dy
and for the sake of completeness the Rayleigh equation has been supplemented by
relations for û and p̂. Together with the boundary conditions at the walls an eigen-
value problem is established which generally has a number of solutions ω = Ω n (α).
Each of these solutions is the dispersion relation of a mode which may contribute to
the fluctuating part of the flow. It is obvious from the Rayleigh equation (4) that
the dispersion relations and consequently (û, v̂)n as well as the Reynolds shear stress
τ 00n = −ρ 12 <{û · v̂ ∗ }n depend on the mean flow profile, in particular on d2 U/dy 2 .
Furthermore it should be noted that τ 00n crucially depends on the phase difference
between û and v̂ and hence can appear also as a negative-friction force.
3.1.2 Exchange of energy between mean flow and flow oscillation

The Reynolds shear stress is essential for the exchange of energy between the mean
flow and the flow oscillation. The rate at which energy per volume is transferred
from the mean to the oscillating part of the flow is given by the product of shear
stress and shear rate τ 00 · dU/dy (angular momentum × angular velocity). From the
incompressible Navier Stokes equations, one obtains
dU dU d ρ 02 d 0 0
τ 00 · = −ρ u0 v 0 · = U u + v 02 + p v + µ . (5)
dy dy dx 2 dy
Herein µ comprises the transport of energy due to viscosity, i. e., diffusion and dissi-
pation, which will be disregarded, to begin with. Thus the power extracted from the
mean flow (left-hand side of Eq. (5)) is fed into the streamwise flux of kinetic energy
and into the wall-normal energy transport due to the pressure-velocity correlation
(first and second term on the right-hand side, respectively). While the wall-normal
energy transport balances the dissipation of energy in the walls and therefore is ir-
reversible, the kinetic energy contained in oscillation of the flow can be returned to
the mean flow if the Reynolds shear stress becomes negative. Under this condition
the first term on the right-hand side is negative as well, meaning that the amplitude
of the oscillation decreases in the mean-flow direction, and we will see from Eq. (7)
that the static pressure may increase under the same condition.
3.1.3 Static pressure gradient

The supply or the recovery of mean flow energy in a homogeneous channel cannot
change the kinetic energy of the mean flow when the velocity profile is assumed to
remain constant along the axial coordinate x. Hence the exchange of energy must
be balanced by the work done by the pressure gradient on the flow. For the sake
of simplicity, the following formulae are restricted to the 2D channel (half-width R)
and to the channel with circular cross-section (radius R). The wall shear stress τ w
is constant over the circumference ∂(S) of the channel in both these cases. So the
balance between the forces due to the pressure gradient, due to the wall friction, and
due to the acceleration of the fluid yields
Z
dp ∂(S) d dS
− = τw + ρU2 . (6)
dx S dx S S
The axial pressure gradient dp/dx is assumed to be constant over the cross-section
which is a good approximation except for extreme axial alteration of the mean ve-
locity profile U (r, x). We are particularly interested in the first term on the right-
hand side of Eq. (6) which is due to the wall shear stress and which will be denoted
Rby dpτ /dx. After some analysis the work done by dpτ /dx on the flow, namely
S
(dpτ /dx)U dS, can be equated with
Z ZR ZR
dpτ τ µ τ 00 dU S τ µ τ 00 dU
− U dS = τ w U ∂(S) = τ dy = τ − 2πrdr
dx dy R dr
S 0 0
| {z } | {z }
2D channel circular duct
(7)
wherein
r
τ (r) = τ 00 (r) + τ µ (r) = τ w (8)
R
has been used which applies to the circular duct as well as to the 2D channel with
r = R − y. So, according to the middle part of Eq. (8), the right-hand side of Eq. (7)
comprises the power that is fed into the oscillation of the flow according to Eq. (5)
and the power that is dissipated by the mean viscous shear stress τ µ . Furthermore
it turns out that the wall shear stress is a measure of the considered energy transfer.
3.2 Qualitative explanation of the observed phenomena
With these basic physical mechanisms that have been summarized in the previous
sections we can speculate about the physics behind the phenomena that have been
described in Sect. 2. To begin with, the development of the turbulent flow in the
resonator section will be considered in the presence of the hypothetical convective
instability. Obviously part of the turbulent fluctuations of the incoming flow is am-
plified by the instability according to the spectra shown in Figures 2 and 10. The
radial distribution of the Reynolds shear stress which is necessarily involved in the
amplification of the fluctuations (Eq. (5)) is expected to differ from the distribution
in the fully developed channel flow (Eq. (8)). This difference inevitably leads to an
alteration of the velocity profile with the consequence that the stability of the flow
and particularly the dispersion relation of the considered instability wave depends
on the axial coordinate. Besides the development of the mean flow profile also the
considerable nonlinear interaction between the growing fluctuations contributes to
the change of the dispersion relation. This interaction will be described by means of
the oscillating component of the Reynolds shear stress in Sect. 4.2.1.
The axial growth rate of acoustically excited small-amplitude instability waves has
indeed been found to depend considerably on the travelling distance (Sect. 2.1.2).
This indicates that a significant readjustment of the velocity profile already occurs
within the short lined duct section – its length L has been varied between 1.8R ≤
L ≤ 7.2R in the experiments. Apart from the flow instability it is expected that the
permeability of the wall causes a sudden increase of the wall shear stress when the
flow enters the lined duct section (to be discussed in more detail in Sect. 4.2.1). This
is confirmed by the pressure drop along the lined duct section which is closely related
to the wall shear stress according to Eq. (6): also with short resonator sections the
pressure drop increases by nearly one order of magnitude (compared to impermeable
smooth wall). So it can be assumed that the readjustment of the mean flow profile
starts at the wall and immediately at the leading edge of the lined duct section.
With regard to the acoustically induced increase of the pressure drop we consider
the effect of the instability wave that is excited by the irradiated sound. Both, the
kinetic energy of the fluctuating part of the flow and the Reynolds shear stress will
increase in proportion to the square of the amplitude of the instability wave since
the turbulent fluctuation and the acoustically excited oscillation are uncorrelated.
With low sound amplitudes the acoustical part of the Reynolds shear stress is small
compared to the turbulent part. So the mean flow remains unaffected, and the
propagation of the acoustically excited instability wave is exclusively governed by
the developing flow which has been described in the previous paragraph. Only when
the acoustical and the turbulent parts of the Reynolds stress become comparable, the
flow will be affected and both, the static pressure drop and the acoustic transmission
coefficient will depend on the sound amplitude. In fact, the thresholds at which the
dependency on the sound amplitude becomes noticeable, are fairly identical for the
two effects.
The pressure drop can be calculated by integration of Eq. (6) over the length L
of the resonator section, provided the second term on the right-hand side of the
equation, i. e. the effect of alteration of the velocity profile can be disregarded. This
is indeed justified because the pressure drop is determined by the static pressure far
ahead and far behind the resonator section where the velocity profile is fully adapted
to the smooth rigid wall of the pipe. The pressure drop which would arise along a
smooth rigid pipe between the measuring points was subtracted from the measured
pressure difference. So only the pressure drop due to the additional wall shear stress
in the resonator section is recorded. With Eq. (7) wherein τ dU/dr has been replaced
by means of the Eqs. (5) and (8), one obtains for the circular pipe
L
1 L R 00 dU
Z Z Z
dpτ dU 2rdr
∆p = − dx = − τ + τµ dx
0 dx U 0 0 dr dr R2
Z
U ρ 02 dS L
= u +v 02 +
S U 2 S 0
Z L
∂(S) p0 v 0 w 1 L
Z Z
dU dS
+ dx + µ − τµ dx . (9)
0 S U U 0 S dr S
First we discuss the most simple case and omit all dissipative effects which are com-
prised in the second and the third term on the right-hand side of Eq. (9). Then
∆p is given by the axial change of the flux of kinetic energy contained in the fluc-
tuation of the velocity. The acoustically excited part of the kinetic energy density
(ρ/2)u02 02
ac + vac is proportional to the square of the amplitude of the instability wave,
and since the acoustic energy density is very small at the leading edge of the resonator
section, the acoustically induced pressure drop ∆pac is proportional to the square of
the pressure amplitude at the rear end the of resonator section which on its part
determines the pressure amplitudes of the transmitted sound and in the backmost
resonator cavity. So the experimental results shown in Fig. 9 and described by Eq. (1)
can be understood for medium sound amplitudes.
The dissipative terms in Eq. (9) exhibit the same quadratic dependency on the
amplitude of the instability wave as the first term on the righthand side of the
equation as long as the dispersion relation of the instability wave is not too much
affected by the nonlinearity of the wave propagation. However, when the growth
of the instability wave becomes saturated at high sound amplitudes (see Fig. 7),
the kinetic energy at the rear end of the resonator section is more affected by the
nonlinearity than the dissipative terms in Eq. (9). So while the pressure drop further
increases with the incident sound amplitude the radiated pressure and the pressure
in the backmost cavity begin to stagnate, i. e. the data points more and more lie
above the 45o line in Fig. 9. In addition one has to take into account that the
ratio between the amplitudes of the pressure and the velocity is influenced by the
considered nonlinearity as well, however there is no simple way to predict how the
function DP{· · ·} in Eq. (1) is affected by this implication of the nonlinearity.
4 Theoretical approaches to the wave propagation in the lined duct
In order to substantiate the physical explanation of the considered phenomena we

need a deeper insight into the properties of the instability wave. Various aspects of
the wave propagation in the lined duct have been studied for this purpose [34,35].
As usual the oscillating part of the flow field is decomposed into independent modes
each of which is characterized by the cross-sectional distribution of the oscillating
quantities {û, v̂, p̂}n and by the dispersion relation ω = Ω n (α); one such example has
already been discussed in connection with the Rayleigh equation (4). In the case of
uniform mean flow (‘flat’ velocity profile) the whole set of the modes is a complete
base for the description of the unsteady part of the field in the duct. A further reason
why a flat velocity profile is assumed in many theoretical studies is the advantage
that both, the mean and the oscillatory part of the flow have a potential in this case,
and that the distributions of the velocity and the pressure {û, v̂, p̂}n can be described
by well-known analytic functions in simple cross-sectional geometries like the 2D and
the circular channel. The eigenvalue problem by which Ω n (α) and {û, v̂, p̂}n are
determined is then reduced to the solution of a transcendental equation.
4.1 Disregarding of shear stress and uniform mean flow

4.1.1 Boundary condition at the wall
The flat velocity profile exhibits a discontinuity at the wall, i. e., the boundary layer
is replaced by an infinitesimal vortex layer. So it is not trivial which of the unsteady
quantities remain continuous when passing through the vortex layer and how, con-
sequently, the boundary condition, i. e. the acoustical admittance of the wall, is to
be translated to the field in the interior of the channel. In any case the pressure has
to be continuous since otherwise the lateral pressure gradient and the lateral accel-
eration of the fluid elements would tend to infinity. In addition the lateral deflection
of the fluid elements on both sides of the vortex layer are assumed to be equal. This
assumption however is justified only in the absence of shear stress as will be shown
in Sect. 4.2.1.
The unsteady deflection of the wall and of the vortex layer, which sticks to the
wall, so to speak, can be clearly defined. However the extension of this term to
the flow field is problematic even if an infinitesimal oscillatory flow is superimposed
on the mean flow. The vortex layer can be described as a set of streamlines which
are determined by the integration of the field of flow directions. Thus the unsteady
deflection of a streamline generally depends on the arbitrary starting point of the in-
tegration. To avoid this problem some local information about the temporal and the
spatial development of the oscillating streamline is assumed to exist such that the re-
lation between the transverse component v 0 of the flow velocity and the hypothetical
deflection η 0 of the streamline can be used to define the deflection
∂η 0 (x, t) ∂η 0 (x, t) Dη 0 (x, t)

v 0 (x, t) = + U (x) =: . (10)
∂t ∂x Dt
Herein x = (x, y, z)t is the 3D position vector, and the x-direction is aligned with
the mean-flow direction (u(x) = [U (y, z), 0, 0]t ). Then v 0 and η 0 are 2D vectors in
the (y, z)-plane. The abbreviation D/Dt := ∂/∂ t + U ∂/∂ x stands for the temporal
derivative in a frame of reference that is moving at velocity U . Thus, from Eq. (10)
and from the assumption that the deflection η 0 of the streamlines is solenoidal, i. e.
that the compressibility of the fluid can be ignored on the infinitesimal scale of the
vortex layer, a jump condition for the wall-normal velocity component can be derived.
In a wave-like field according to Eq. (3)
ω̌
v̂⊥ = v̂w (11)
ω
is obtained wherein v̂⊥ and v̂w are the wall-normal velocity components of the wall
and the fluid elements, respectively, and ω̌ = ω −α U is the Doppler-shifted frequency
in the frame of reference of the fluid elements. So while the boundary condition at
the wall is a local relation between the wall-normal velocity and the pressure for zero
mean flow, it becomes non-local due to the dependency on α in the presence of mean
flow.
4.1.2 Dispersion relations

In view of the sound amplification in the resonator section Großer [34,36] has stud-
ied the potential of various common approaches to the theoretical treatment of the
wave propagation in lined ducts. Unfortunately none of these approaches results in
dispersion relations that at least approximately exhibit the observed dependencies
on the frequency and the flow velocity. One such approach will be discussed in the
following in order to identify the immanent problems which still have to be resolved.
In the Figures 13 and 14 both, the real and the imaginary part of the wavenumber are
shown as functions of the frequency for an axisymmetric (m = 0) and an azimuthal
mode (m = 1), respectively. These modes have some properties in common with
hydrodynamic instability modes: they travel in the direction of flow (except for a
certain frequency interval for m = 1) while their amplitudes grow, and they exist
only with superimposed mean flow, i. e., with U → 0 ⇒ α → ∞ which however
is found to be valid only at low frequencies. In the respective eigenvalue problem,
uniform compressible mean flow in a circular pipe has been considered. The acoustic
admittance of the wall can be reliably computed from the geometrical parameters
of the resonator cavities [29], and the jump condition (11) has been used to fix the
boundary condition.
Some data points obtained from the pressure distribution in the lined duct section
(Sect. 2.1.2 and Ref. [29]) are displayed in Fig. 13, and the respective theoretical values
are correspondingly marked. While, with U /c = const = 0.23, the measured phase
constant <{α} strongly increases as a function of the frequency and the spatial
growth rate −={α} exhibits a clear maximum at 1077 Hz, the theoretical values
only slightly depend on the frequency above the resonance frequency (840 Hz), and
even worse, <{α} has the opposite slope. When in contrast the flow velocity is
varied and the data points are taken at the frequencies of maximum spatial growth
of the instability wave (Fig. 6), then the general trend is reproduced for <{α} but
not for ={α}. Also the dispersion relations shown in Fig. 14 for m = 1 are only
marginally compatible with the observations. After all, the wavenumber depends
nearly exclusively on ω/U at low frequencies, and this kind of dependency has also
been observed with the spectral peaks and the associated coherence of the pressure
fluctuations in the backmost cavity (see the peak marked by C in Fig. 10). The
theoretical wavenumbers at the respective peak frequencies are marked in Fig. 14
12
10
8
U
(wavenumber) x (pipe radius)
6
U
4
−2
−4 U
−6
−8
0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4
frequency [kHz]
Figure 13. Dispersion relations of a m = 0 mode in a lined duct with dimensions according
to Fig. 1. The flow velocity of the uniform compressible mean flow has been varied between
0.1 ≤ U /c ≤ 0.3 in steps of 0.01. The real (green) and the imaginary (red) parts of the
wavenumber are shown in the upper and the lower part of the Figure, respectively. The
experimental data (colored, from Ref. [29]) and the corresponding theoretical values (black)
t). The (blue) circled cross and the dashed
refer to U /c = 0.17(+), 0.20(4), 0.23(◦), 0.25(u
lines describe a bifurcation (see text).
by circles which happen to appear at equivalent points of the dispersion relations,

characterized e. g. by the maximum of <{α}. Likewise it can only be speculated
that the structure found in the theoretical dispersion relations at frequencies around
1000 Hz might be related to the increase of the pressure drop that is achieved by the
excitation of the antisymmetric mode at similar frequencies (see Fig. 12).
The instability denoted by C in Fig. 10 and marked by the circles in Fig. 14 ob-
viously does not rely on the compressibility of the air. The dynamics behind this
instability is very similar to the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability which results from a
balance of the accelerating forces that the fluid elements experience on both the
sides of shear layers due to the unsteady deflection of the shear layer. In the present
case the fluid flow in the interior of the duct behaves like an oscillating jet which
forces the surrounding fluid in the cavities to oscillate in the azimuthal direction. So
the accelerating forces are proportional to η̂0 ω 2 in the cavities and proportional to
η̂U (ω − αU )2 in the flow. The sum pof these forces has to cancel out which yields
α = (ω/U )(1 ∓ iκη ) wherein κη = η̂0 /η̂U depends on the geometric details of the
(wavenumber) x (pipe radius)

2
0 U
−2
−4
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4

frequency [kHz]
Figure 14. Like Fig. 13, but for the m = 1 mode, 0.05 ≤ U /c ≤ 0.35 in steps of 0.05. The
circles mark the frequencies that correspond to the peak C in Fig. 10(a).
fluid oscillation. Comparing this result with the dispersion relations in Fig. 14 yields
κη = 1 in the low frequency limit.
4.1.3 Bifurcations and absolute instabilities

Besides the discrepancies between the theoretical and experimental results the dis-
persion relations exhibit unexpected branch points which particularly show up with
={α}. Two of these are marked by circled crosses in Figs. 13 and 14. The existence
of such branch points has serious consequences for the stability of the flow because
they may be associated with absolute instabilities. In homogeneous, absolutely un-
stable flow a locally excited perturbation temporally grows and finally spreads over
the whole flow region. By contrast, a convective instability which is supposed to
cause the spatial growth of the pressure fluctuations in the resonator section, results
in amplifying perturbations that propagate away from the source; so after the source
has been switched off the perturbation decays at fixed locations.
Whether an absolute instability exists is commonly investigated by means of the
group velocity dΩ n /dα. If for any mode n a complex wavenumber αvgr0 is found
such that dΩ n /dα = 0 for α = αvgr0 , a wave packet with the complex mid-frequency
ωvgr0 = Ω n (αvgr0 ) will stay where it is. It then depends on the sign of ={ωvgr0 }
whether the amplitude of this in principle infinitely extended wave package grows
(={ωvgr0 } > 0 ⇒ absolute instability) or decays. It is to be annotated that
the group velocity, particularly if it is not real, does not allow any conclusion about
the direction of ‘propagation’ of the mode, i. e. about the question, whether the
mode contributes to the wave field upstream or downstream of the source. This so
called causality problem has to be resolved (Sect. 4.1.4) if no absolute instability is
encountered and if a given mode shall be checked for convective instability. This is
the case if the mode grows in the causality direction.
The relation between absolute instability and the existence of a branch point in
the dispersion relation becomes obvious when the dispersion relation is expanded in
powers of δα = α − αvgr0 . With δω = ω − ωvgr0 one obtains

1 d2 Ω n (αvgr0 )
Ω n (αvgr0 + δα) = ωvgr0 + a2 δα2 + O(δα3 ) with a2 =
2 dα2
⇒ δω = a2 δα2 + O(δα3 ) . (12)
Hence the inverse function α = inv{Ω n }(ω) has two branches in the neighborhood of
ωvgr0 , namely δα(ω) = ±(δω/a2 )1/2 which have a common point if and only if ωvgr0
is exactly on the path through the complex ω-plane. Otherwise the two branches are
supposed to be the dispersion relations of two different modes. These however are
mixed when a parameter of the eigenvalue problem is continuously varied such that
ωvgr0 crosses over the path through the ω-plane (also the path through the ω-plane
may be subject to deformation); then the four parts of branches that emanate from
the branch point are differently combined before and after the crossing. In the case
considered in Fig. 13 the path through the ω-plane is the real axis and the varied
parameter is the flow velocity. So, with ={ωvgr0 } = 0 the flow is marginally stable
for U /c = 0.1155 but theoretically becomes absolutely unstable (={ωvgr0 } > 0) with
U /c > 0.1155. The dashed curves in Fig. 13 illustrate the four possible dependencies
of ={α} on the frequency: each of the two low-frequency branches can combine with
each of the two high-frequency branches. Only two of these possibilities are shown
with the dispersion relations plotted in the Figure. The absolute instability that is
expected above a critical flow velocity has not been observed in the experiments, and
before we further search for indications of an absolute instability we consider the
convective instabilities and the causality problem.
4.1.4 Convective instability and causality problem

As mentioned earlier the direction of spatial growth −={α} of a mode has to agree
with its causality direction νcaus (= ±1), i. e. νcaus · ={α} < 0, if the mode is to
be classified as convective unstable. A trivial but laborious way to determine νcaus
is the computation of the total field which is caused by a local source switched on
at t = 0. To avoid this effort Briggs [37] has developed a criterion which allows to
determine the causality direction on the basis of the dispersion relation. He replaces
the switching-on by exponential growth of the source amplitude, and the imitation
of the discontinuous switching-on is the better the faster the amplitude grows, i. e.
if ={ω} → ∞. It is to be expected that the excited field then concentrates at the
location of the source because no time for the spreading of the field has been left. So
each mode decays in its direction of causality: νcaus · ={α} > 0. Now, according to
the Briggs criterion, ={ω} is gradually reduced to zero and νcaus · ={α} is checked for
changing the sign which indicates that the respective mode finally (at real frequencies)
grows in the causality direction and thus is subject to convective instability.
However two conditions have to be fulfilled before the Briggs criterion can be applied:
(i) The result must be independent of the path through the ω-plane on which ={ω}
is reduced to zero.
00
(ii) An upper bound ωmax must exist such that νcaus · ={α} > 0 for all ω with
00
={ω} > ωmax ; an equivalent and actually verifiable condition is the existence of an
00 00
upper bound ωmax such that ={Ωn (α)} ≤ ωmax for all real α.
The condition (ii) is frequently violated, in particular, if free shear layers with finite
thickness are approximated by infinitesimally thin vortex layers (then in many cases
a hydrodynamic mode is encountered with ={Ω(α)} → ∞ for α → ∞ + 0 i. This
problem has been investigated by Jones and Morgan [38] and later by Crighton and
Leppington [39], and the Briggs criterion has been modified by the latter authors.
They propose to trace α = inv{Ω n }(ω) while running on a quarter arc of a circle in the
first quadrant of the ω-plane, i. e. from i|ω| to |ω| with |ω| kept constant. Rienstra and
Peake [16] have compared these two criteria for the wave propagation in resonatingly
lined circular ducts which are comparable to our case, except for the much higher
quality factor of our resonators. The authors find that the causality direction indeed
differs between the two criteria in several cases. However the authors do not discuss
the existence of branch points of the dispersion relations which cause a violation of
the condition (i). We find a great number of branch points with ={ωvgr0 } > 0 not
depending on whether a flat velocity profile or a more realistic representation of the
turbulent flow in the lined duct is assumed [35]. We even suspect that all the modes
in the forth quadrant of the α-plane are connected via branch points.
4.1.5 Search for experimental indications of absolute instability

The existence of branch points with ={ωvgr0 } > 0 in the theoretical dispersion re-
lations raises the question whether there are experimental observations that hint at
absolute instabilities of the flow and have been overlooked up to now. In most cases
a steady, however absolutely unstable flow assumes a spatially and temporally pe-
riodic state the frequency and wavenumber of which is not far from <{ωvgr0 } and
<{αvgr0 } – a salient example is the vortex street in the wakes of bluff bodies [40]. An
axisymmetric oscillatory state in the resonator section should radiate sound into the
rigid pipes connected to the resonator section, and the distribution of the radiated
pressure amplitudes should be similar to the distribution of a sine wave; by con-
trast turbulent fluctuations that have passed a narrow-band filter or a narrow-band
amplifier are normally distributed.
Brandes [29,30] indeed finds narrow peaks in the pressure spectra which are radi-
ated into the pipe upstream of the lined duct section. While the peak denoted by
D in Fig. 2(c) reflects only a weak example of this kind of instability, much stronger
peaks have been found with higher resonance frequencies (2934 Hz in most of Bran-
des’ experiments). The signals that result from this instability have all the mentioned
properties of self-excited oscillations. However the frequency of the oscillation is in-
versely proportional to the the spacing of the cavities. So it is very likely that the
oscillations are generated by a feedback loop rather than by an absolute instability. It
is remarkable that also narrow-band sound amplification is observed at the frequen-
cies of these oscillations; the amplified sound is radiated in the direction against the
flow [25], in contrast to the sound amplification shown in Fig. 4. Brandes explains this
kind of sound amplification by partial synchronization of the self-exited oscillation
with the incident sound. Thereby the amplitude of the synchronized sound radiation
is proportional to the much smaller amplitude of the incident sound wave. However
with high incident sound amplitudes, the self-excited oscillation is completely syn-
chronized, and it is even possible to considerably change its frequency. Yet, neither
an increase of the total radiated sound power nor an increase of the static pressure
drop is effected by the synchronization.
The sound pressure that originates from the mainly studied resonator section and
that causes the spectral peak A1 in Fig. 2 exhibits some properties which might be
due to an absolute instability and which have already been mentioned in connection
with Fig. 3. With all the studied configurations consisting of at least six of the
cavities shown in Fig. 1 a particular flow velocity U jump is found at which the peak
frequency jumps from ca. 1200 Hz to ca. 1260 Hz. At somewhat lower flow velocities
the peak width decreases with increasing flow velocity while the increase of the peak
amplitude is steeper than at other flow velocities. In this range of flow velocities
also a strong change of the distribution of the pressure amplitudes is found which
finally is very similar to the distribution of a sine wave. In addition the pressure
oscillation can be synchronized with incident sound [35]. So the acoustic transmission
coefficient becomes particularly large at these flow velocities (see Fig. 4 for 16 cavities
with U jump /c ≈ 0.35). However while U jump strongly depends on the number of
cavities and on the geometry of the duct cross-section the ‘jump’-frequency does not.
Furthermore the strong oscillation of the pressure becomes weaker or even breaks
off when the flow velocity exceeds U jump . These latter facts do not belong to the
obvious concomitants of an absolute instability.
4.2 Effect of shear stress

4.2.1 Turbulent Stokes layer and its effect on the boundary condition at the wall
The essential simplifying assumptions which have been made in the previously dis-
cussed calculations are, except for the axial homogeneity of the mean flow, (i) uni-
form mean flow over the cross-section, (ii) homogeneous locally reacting compliance
of the wall, and (iii) disregarding of shear stress. (i) The introduction of an ade-
quate approximation of the real velocity profile has indeed an appreciable effect on
the dispersion relations (not shown here), however the general dependency on the
frequency and on the flow velocity remains unchanged. (ii) The wavelength of the
observed instability wave is much larger than the spacing of the cavities which makes
it unlikely that the inhomogeneity of the wall plays an essential role in the phenomena
to be explained here. In fact the sound amplification has been observed to increase
when the ratio between the width of the cavities and the wavelength of the instability
wave is decreased [26]. So the inhomogeneity is obviously not a precondition of the
considered instability. (iii) Finally the possible effect of shear stress remains to be
studied more extensively.
In the flow to be considered the turbulent mixing and the generation of Reynolds
stress are still effective very close to the wall here because the permeability of the
wall allows the turbulent eddies to pass through the wall. So the axial momentum of
the eddies is very efficiently transported to the wall which means that the Reynolds
shear stress τ 00 = −ρ u0 v 0 including the wall shear stress τ w are much higher (by
nearly one order of magnitude) than with an impervious smooth wall. Nevertheless
the actual transfer to the wall is effected by viscosity within a very thin layer. Within
this layer the mean shear rate dU/dy = τ w /µ must be extremely high so that the flow
velocity increases from zero to a value U , nearly discontinuously; U ≈ U /4 has been

estimated on the basis of the sound reflection from and the transmission through the
resonator section measured at frequencies far below the resonance frequency [19].
Thus the wall-normal flow velocity vew of the instability wave imposes an oscil-
lating component τew = −ρ U vew on the wall-normal transport of axial momentum;
vew = hvw · exp(iωt)i · exp(−iωt) is the phase average by which the coherent part at
the frequency ω is filtered out from the fluctuating quantity vw (t). The considered
oscillation τew of the wall shear stress is by orders of magnitude greater than with
an impervious smooth wall even if the considerable increase of τew by the turbulent
mixing [41] is taken into account. The transfer of axial momentum to the wall by
the wall-normal particle velocity, and the associated high acoustic shear stress have
scarcely been regarded in aero-acoustics so far. This mechanism is observed also with
openings subject to grazing flow [42], and it can be used with deflected mean flow to
arbitrarily increase the quality factor of resonators [43–45]. Pöthke and Ronneberger
[42] determine the amplitude of the shear force at transverse slits in the wall of the
flow duct; these had the same dimensions as openings of the cavities in the present
experiments. At low frequencies (compared to the ratio between flow velocity and
slit width) the same value of the shear force is obtained as in the aforementioned
investigation by Rebel and Ronneberger [19], but the shear force amplitude increases
considerably as a function of the frequency according to Ref. [42]. Yet, a frequency-
independent value U = U /4 is assumed in the following estimates.
The oscillation of the wall shear stress in the lined duct section excites a shear wave
which is propagated by the wall-normal gradient of the shear stress τe = τe00 + τeµ into
the flow region. The viscous part τeµ = µ · ∂e u/∂y of the shear stress is small compared
to the turbulent part and therefore will be disregarded. The layer within which the
shear wave decays is called ‘turbulent Stokes layer’ following the denomination in
the laminar case. Though the thickness δS of the Stokes layer is much greater in the
turbulent case than in the laminar case we assume that δS is still small compared to
the lateral extent of the field of the instability wave which decays approximately like
exp(−|<{α}|y). So we attempt to subsume the influence of the shear stress under
the boundary condition at the wall.
In order to study the influence of the shear stress on the deflection of the stream-
lines, the relation (10) is introduced into the equations of conservation of mass and
momentum. For the sake of clearness a 2D flow is assumed composed of the mean
flow and the field of a coherent oscillation while the effect of the turbulent fluctua-
tions are already taken into account by the Reynolds shear stress. Then one obtains
for the deflection of the fictitious streamlines
D2 ∂e 1 D2 pe

η ∂ ∂ pe ∂e τxx ∂eτxy
ρ 2 + 2 2 − − − = 0. (13)
Dt ∂y c Dt ∂x ∂x ∂x ∂y
The terms τexx , τexy = τe00 + τeµ (and τeyy ) are the components of the tensor which
comprises the oscillatory parts of the viscous and the Reynolds stresses. A clearer
version of Eq. (13) is obtained when a single mode is considered such that ∂/∂x and
D/Dt can be replaced by iα and −iω̌, respectively:
dη̂ p̂ iαp̂ − iατ̂xx − dτ̂xy /dy
= − 2 − iα . (14)
dy ρc ρ ω̌ 2
The term dη̂/dy is the oscillation of the wall-normal spacing of the streamlines or
in other words the oscillation of the thickness of the streamtubes. dη̂/dy is effected
by the compressibility (ρ c2 )−1 of the fluid and by the oscillation of the length of the
elements of the streamtubes (second term on the right-hand side of Eq. (14)). The
latter is described by the responsible accelerating forces. The terms which depend
on the pressure will be omitted from the further consideration since these terms are
already included in the differential equations which describe the dynamics of the fluid
due to the action of the pressure (e. g., the Rayleigh equation (4) with the inclusion
of the compressibility effects). This includes that the velocity field is assumed to be
composed of two non-interacting parts which are exclusively governed by the pressure
and by the shear stress, respectively.
The oscillation of the Stokes layer thickness is computed by the integration of
dη̂/dy through the Stokes layer. Complying with the assumption that the Stokes
thickness δS is much smaller than the lateral extent |<{α}|−1 of the wave field only
the limit |<{α}|δS → 0 will be considered. The shear stress is assumed to decay from
its value τ̂w at the wall to zero at the outer edge of the Stokes layer according to
τ̂xy (y) = τ̂w · θ̂(y̌) with y̌ = y/δS . Then only the term with dτ̂xy /dy = (τ̂w /δS )(dθ̂/dy̌)
contributes to the integral and since this term is zero outside the Stokes layer the
integration can be extended to infinity without changing the result:
ZδS Z∞
dη̂τ iατ̂w dθ̂/dy̌
δ̂S := η̂τ (δS ) − η̂τ (0) = dy = 2 dy̌ . (15)
dy ω ρ [1 − αU (y̌)/ω]2
0 0
Thus, the amplitude δ̂S of the oscillation of the Stokes layer thickness is proportional
to the amplitude of the wall shear stress τ̂w = −ρ U v̂w = i ωρ U δ̂w , and consequently
is proportional to the amplitude δ̂w := v̂/iω|y=−0 of the fictitious deflection of the
wall. The deflection of the streamlines at the border of the Stokes layer is then given
by δ̂w + δ̂S . So the ratio |δ̂S |/|δ̂w | can be used to depict the influence of the shear
stress on the boundary condition at the wall.
In order to estimate θ̂(y̌), and with it the integral on the right-hand side of Eq. (15),
we follow the common assumption that the relation between the Reynolds stress
tensor and the respective flow field is local and can be described by the so called
eddy viscosity µ t . For the mean flow through a circular pipe the wall of which is
rough and is assumed to be a fair equivalent to the pervious wall [19], one finds
τ 00 /(du/dy) =: µ t = ρ Uµ · (y + y0 ), wherein Uµ = au U and y0 = ay R (here
au = 0.044, ay = 0.017) are fitted to the mean wall shear stress τ w and the average
mean flow velocity U . Unfortunately much less is known about the relation between
τe00 and u
e . Hartmann [46] has investigated the propagation of shear waves in a turbu-
lent channel flow at low Reynolds numbers by means of a direct numerical simulation
which he validated on the basis of comprehensive experimental data [47–51]. In accor-
dance with theoretical considerations he finds that the turbulence is equivalent to a
viscoelastic fluid with regard to the response of the shear stress to a shearing deforma-
tion. However, the extrapolation of his results to the present Reynolds numbers and
frequencies yields that the time constant that characterizes the memory of the tur-
bulence is much shorter than the periods of the considered oscillations. So the ratio
10
5
2
1
.5
.2
.1
10
8
6
4 10
8
Re 2 6
{wa 4
ven 0 2
0
um −2
ber −2 −4 −6
−4
ber}
} −8 venum
−10 Im{wa
Figure 15. The amplitude ratio |δ̂S |/|δ̂w | of the thickness of the Stokes layer and the
deflection of the wall with contour lines at |δ̂S |/|δ̂w | = 1 and |δ̂S |/|δ̂w | = 5 is plotted as a
function of the complex wavenumber of the modes that propagate in the lined duct. The
wavenumber is normalized to the duct radius. Parameters: f = 1100 Hz and U /c = 0.25.
µ̃ t = τ̂ 00 /(dû/dy) should be real and should assume the value µ̃ t ≈ 2µ t according to

the somewhat uncertain extrapolation of Hartmann’s results. In a WKBJ approxima-
tion the wavenumber γ = (−i ωρ/µ̃ t )1/2 of shear waves in homogeneous R yfluids is trans-
ferred to the actual inhomogeneous case, yielding ûτ (y) ≈ ûτ (0) exp( 0 γ(y 0 )dy 0 ). So
Eq. (15) can be evaluated with θ̂(y) ≈ (µ̃ t γ ûτ )(y)/(µ̃ t γ ûτ )w .
The ratio |δ̂S |/|δ̂w | for a typical combination of parameters (1100 Hz, U /c = 0.25)
is depicted in Fig. 15 as a function of the wavenumber α. For wavenumbers that have
been observed in the experiments (see Fig. 13), |δ̂S |/|δ̂w | assumes values which are
typically much greater than unity. So obviously the oscillation of the Stokes layer
thickness turns out to be the governing factor in the boundary condition at the wall.
4.2.2 Influence of the oscillation of the Stokes layer thickness on the dispersion
relations and open questions
First computational results reveal that the dispersion relations are indeed strongly
affected by the oscillation of the Stokes layer thickness. Similar to the experimental
observations one of these dispersion relations (not shown here) exhibits maxima of
the spatial growth rate (−={α}), and at the same frequencies, a positive slope of the
phase constant. However, this occurs at frequencies below the resonance frequency,
and the phase constant is much too small and mostly even negative. Furthermore
the dependency on the flow velocity is still contrary to the experiment, and the
bifurcations have not disappeared from the dispersion relations.
Nevertheless, with regard to the approximations that have been made in the pre-
vious section, it is still open to question whether the gap between experiment and
theory can be closed by taking the shear stress into account. In fact more than one of
these assumptions turn out to be problematic. Even the very first assumption that
the velocity can be decomposed into two non-interacting parts which are determined
by the pressure and by the shear stress, respectively, cannot be maintained with low
phase velocities and small ratios ={α}/<{α}. In such cases a so called critical layer
yc exists with ω̌(yc ) ≈ 0 so that the right-hand side of the Rayleigh equation (4) as
well as the integrand in Eq. (15) are nearly singular there. This unphysical singular-
ity causes, among others, the discontinuity of |δ̂S |/|δ̂w | when the real α-axis is passed
(see Fig. 15). In reality the shear stress adjusts itself such that the numerator in
Eq. (14) becomes small together with ω̌. Also is the Stokes layer thickness not small,
i. e. |<{α}|δS = O(1) with the wavenumbers observed in the experiment nor is the
WKBJ approximation unquestionable, close to the wall.
So it appears to be necessary to solve the full problem before a final answer to
the question can be expected whether or not the observed instability waves and their
dependency on the essential parameters can be described by the wave propagation in a
homogeneous environment (i. e. that all parameters are assumed to be independent of
x). This leads to a fourth order differential equation if eddy-viscosity is assumed, and
the algorithm for the solution of the respective eigenvalue problem has to be enhanced
for this purpose. Yet it is questionable whether the response of the turbulence can
indeed be described by an eddy-viscosity in view of the fact that the turbulence is
by itself subject to flow instability so that its state can be anticipated to be far from
equilibrium. Beyond that, regarding the bifurcations of the dispersion relations and
the associated absolute instabilities, it is suspected that it is indispensable to take
the spatial development of the flow into account. This might lead to the conclusion
that the distance within which the flow is subject to a certain absolute instability
is too short for the development of a global instability [52], however that the wave
propagation is nevertheless governed by the absolute instability.
5 Summary and concluding remarks
A strong convective instability has been found with a short section of a flow duct
which was provided with a resonating lining. Sound waves that propagate in the
direction of the mean flow as well as turbulent pressure fluctuations are amplified
by this instability, and the pressure drop along the lined duct section is drastically
increased due to the power consumption by the excited amplifying instability wave.
While the sound radiation from the rear end of the lined duct section into the trailing
rigid pipe is possible only with the fundamental axially symmetric mode (m = 0), the
increase of the pressure drop is achieved also with an antisymmetric mode (m = 1)
nearly as efficiently as with the (m = 0) mode. This is in favour of technical appli-
cations of the phenomenon because the mostly undesired radiation of the controlling
sound is avoided in this way. One such application, namely the active suppression of
low-frequency sound transmission through the lined duct section, has already been
demonstrated. The sound-induced pressure gradient can be increased by reducing
the free cross-section of the flow duct by a cylindrical coaxial body such that only
an annular gap remains open to the flow. A sound-induced increase of the pressure
gradient of up to 5% of the dynamic pressure per gap width has been observed, how-
ever the relative increase of the pressure drop remains rather independent of the gap
width.
Many of the observed phenomena can be explained, at least on a qualitative level,
if the convective instability of the flow is taken for granted. The enhancement of
the Reynolds shear stress caused by the spatial growth of the instability wave plays
an essential role in the interaction between the mean and the oscillating part of the
flow. Thus both, the mean velocity profile as well as the intensity and the structure
of the turbulence experience a strong alteration along the way through the lined
duct section, and the spatial development of the flow on its part strongly affects the
growth of the instability wave. The exact nature of the instability however remains
unclear. So far, the search for an adequate description of the dynamics of the flow has
been restricted to approaches that are based on homogeneous mean flow conditions
or at the most on a slowly developing mean flow, and on a mode decomposition of
the oscillating field. The interaction between the instability wave and the turbulence
has been introduced by means of an eddy-viscosity and has been found to have a
dominant influence on the dynamics of the flow. All these attempts have ended up in
unrealistic dispersion relations and particularly in the detection of absolute instability
which however has not been observed in the experiments. Therefore, though not all
the implications of the eddy-viscosity have been studied up to now, we conjecture
that the spatial development of both, the mean flow and the instability wave have to
be considered in a joint analysis.
A few of the observations have not yet been explained even on the qualitative level
mentioned above. Among these are the reduction (in contrast to an increase) of the
pressure drop by superimposed sound as well as the frequency gap that exists between
1200 Hz and 1260 Hz for the m = 0 mode but is particularly favourable for the m = 1
mode; by the way a similar gap has been observed for the C-mode (m = 1) between
300 Hz and 380 Hz (see Fig. 10). Presumably these observations are caused by some
interaction between different instability waves, whether turbulent or coherent, and
can be explained only by deeper insight into the dynamics of the considered flow.
Acknowledgements. The authors are indebted to Sabine Förster, Jörg Rebel, Michael
Krause, Lars Enghardt, Andreas Pöthke, Michael Brandes, Björn Lange, and Jakob Großer
who, by their diploma- and doctoral theses have essentially contributed to the material which
has been presented here. Part of this research has been funded by the Deutsche Forschungs-
gemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) whose support is gratefully acknowledged.
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Active control of sound and vibration

History – Fundamentals – State of the art
Dieter Guicking
Email: [email protected]
Abstract. In a narrow sense, coherent active control of sound and vibration is the cancel-
lation or (less often) enhancement by superposition of an antiphase or in-phase additional
signal, usually from an external source of sound or vibration. The historical development of
the technologies are outlined, the fundamentals under aspects of physics, signal processing
and algorithms are treated, and the current states of research and applications are reviewed,
more or less systematically sorted. Related fields such as adaptive optics, active flow control,
and control of nonlinear dynamical systems are also included. Active control of sound and
vibration in a wider sense, the incoherent superposition, aimed at sound power enhancement
etc., is not considered in this survey.
1 Introduction
The concept of cancelling unwanted sound or vibrations by superimposing a com-

pensation signal exactly in antiphase is not new. In acoustics, most of the early
publications in this field are patent applications, showing that technical applications
were considered possible. However, for a long time experiments were nothing more
than laboratory demonstrations which were smiled at as curiosities, far from reality.
Only modern electronics made technical applications feasible.
The situation was different with the compensation of low-frequency mechanical
vibrations; these techniques were used in practise at a very early stage. In the fol-
lowing, an overview is given of the historical development, technical realisations, and
present research activities.
2 Active noise control (ANC)
2.1 Early investigations

The first experiments on the superposition of sound fields were presumably made in
1878 by Lord Rayleigh [1]. He describes under the heading “Points of Silence” how
he scanned, with his ear, the interference field produced by two electromagnetically
108 D. Guicking
synchronised tuning forks, and that he found maxima and minima of loudness. Al-
though it can be assumed that these experiments should only prove that coherent
sound fields can interfere in the same way as do optical fields (which was known since
the days of Thomas Young), patent applications by Coanda [2,3] and Lueg [4] were
aimed at possible noise reduction – however only in Lueg’s proposal in a physically
realistic way. Lueg’s German and especially the related US application [5] with an
additional sheet of drawings are, therefore, considered rightly as the first written
documents on active control of sound.
Lueg already proposed the usage of electroacoustic components, but the first lab-
oratory experiments were documented by Olson 1953 [6] and 1956 [7], who also listed
far-sighted prospective applications. Technical applications were not possible at that
time because of the clumsy electronic vacuum tube equipment, lacking sufficient ver-
satility. Also, our ears present a problem, namely the nearly logarithmic dependence
of the perceived loudness on the sound pressure. For example, a sound level reduction
by 20 dB requires an amplitude precision of the compensation signal within 1 dB and
a phase precision within 6 degrees of the nominal values – for all frequency compo-
nents of the noise signal. These demands, together with the requirement of temporal
stability, have impeded for a long time the technical use of coherent-active compen-
sation systems (also termed anti-sound) until in recent years digital adaptive filters
proved to be the appropriate tool.
2.2 The energy objection

In the context of the active cancellation of sound fields a question often posed is
“Where does the energy go?” With the seemingly convincing argument that the
primary field energy can only be enhanced by adding secondary sound sources, the
concept of active noise control (ANC) is principally questionable [8]. The objection is
correct if the cancellation is achieved by interference only; a local cancellation leads to
doubling of the sound pressure elsewhere. But a more detailed consideration reveals
that the secondary sources can, properly placed and driven, absorb the primary
energy. In other situations, the sources interact such that the radiation impedance is
influenced and thereby the sound production reduced. This will be elucidated in the
following sections.
2.3 The JMC theory

M. Jessel and his coworkers G. Mangiante and G. Canévet have developed a theory
which has become known, after their initials, as the JMC theory. They have treated
the problem sketched in Fig. 1 (e. g., Ref. [9]). Sound sources Q are located within a
volume V with surface S. Along S, secondary sources shall be arranged such that they
compensate the sound field radiated to the outside, but do not alter the field within
V . This is possible according to Huygens’ principle: substitute sources q continuously
distributed along S can create the same sound field in the outside as the primary
sources Q. With reversed poling, they produce a field which is in antiphase to the
original one. Assuming that such reversed (and acoustically transparent) substitute
sources operate together with Q, the sound fields in the outside cancel each other.
Active control of sound and vibration 109
q0 , q
1
V
Q
Figure 1. The Jessel–Mangiante–Canévet (JMC) theory.
If the cancellation sources are acoustic monopoles they radiate not only to the
outside but also into V , creating standing waves and enhancing the sound energy in
V . The inward radiation can be prevented by combining monopoles q0 along S with
dipoles q1 so that the primary field in V is not altered. As to the energy, the tripoles
formed by the q0 and q1 (directional radiators with cardioid characteristic) absorb,
along S, the sound coming from Q. They serve as perfectly matched absorbers with
an acoustic input impedance equal to the characteristic impedance of the medium.
With the same argument, it follows that a source-free region V can be shielded
actively against sound influx from the outside by arranging appropriate compensation
sources along the surface S of V . Monopole distributions along S reflect, tripoles
absorb the incident sound.
For a given surface S and primary source distribution Q(r), where r is the position
vector, the substitution sources q0 (r) and q1 (r) can be calculated from the Helmholtz-
Huygens integral equation which links the sound field in a region to the sound pressure
and its gradient along the surface [10].
For practical applications, the theoretically required continuous source distribution
has to be replaced by discrete sources. Their minimal surface density follows from
their absorption cross section A = λ2 /4π [11] and the smallest sound wavelength λ
for which the system shall be effective. This concept has been verified in computer
simulations [12] and experimentally in an anechoic room [13]. A practical application
is noise shielding of large open-air power transformers by an array of loudspeakers
to save the people living in the surroundings from the annoying hum [14]. It was also
reported that cattle grazing near a noisy power transformer gave less milk.
A few researchers are further developing the JMC theory [15,16].
2.4 One-dimensional sound propagation and algorithms

Primary and cancellation sound must have the same direction of propagation. It is
therefore easier to cancel plane, guided waves in ducts (below the cuton frequency
of the first lateral mode) than, for example, three-dimensional sound fields in rooms
with omnidirectional propagation. In a set-up as sketched in Fig. 2 (which was in
110 D. Guicking
microphone
primary noise cancellation
loudspeaker
signal
processing
Figure 2. Principle of active feedforward cancellation of sound in a duct.
principle already proposed by P. Lueg [5] in 1934) the sound incident from the left is
picked up by the microphone and, after some processing, fed to the loudspeaker such
that to the right side the primary and the additional signal cancel each other.
After Lueg’s idea, the “signal processing” should comprise the amplitude adjust-
ment, sign reversal, and time delay according to the acoustic path length. However, an
active noise control system is not practically applicable in this simple form. First, the
acoustic feedback from the loudspeaker to the microphone has to be avoided and,
second, in most cases it is necessary to follow up the transfer function adaptively
since the time delay and the sound spectrum can change as a result of temperature
drift, superimposed flow, and other environmental conditions. It is therefore com-
mon practise today to apply adaptive digital filters which are implemented on fast
signal processors to enable online updating. Figure 3 shows a typical block diagram
(amplifiers, A/D and D/A converters, and antialiasing lowpass filters being omitted).
The transfer function of the acoustic feedback path from the loudspeaker L to the
reference microphone R is modeled by the feedback compensation filter F CF so that
the input signal x(t) to the main filter A does not contain contributions from L. The
error microphone E receives, in the case of incomplete cancellation, an error signal
e(t) which serves for the adaptation of the filter A. This filter adapts such that it
models the acoustic transfer function from R to L, including the (complex) frequency
responses of R and L. The filters A and F CF are often realised as transversal filters
(finite impulse response, or FIR filters), and the most common adaptation algorithm
is the “filtered-x LMS algorithm” after Widrow and Hoff [17] where LMS stands
for least mean squares. The algorithm is controlled by the product e(t)x(t) and
adjusts the filter coefficients by a stochastic gradient method so that x(t) and e(t) are
decorrelated as far as possible. If the primary sound is broadband, the propagation
delay from L to E decorrelates x(t) and e(t) to a certain degree which impairs
the performance of the ANC system. In order to compensate for this effect, x(t) is
prefiltered in the update path (lower left) with a model H̃LE of the error path HLE .
The necessary error path identification is performed with an auxiliary broadband
signal of the noise generator N G in the adaptation unit shown at the lower right
of Fig. 3. The coefficients of H̃LE (and also of F CF ) are either determined once at
start-up and then kept constant or, if the transfer functions vary too much with time,
permanently; in the latter case, however, the (weak) auxiliary signal remains audible
at the duct end since it is not cancelled by the loudspeaker signal y(t).
reference compensation error

microphone loudspeaker microphone
R error path E
acoustic feedback
primary sound L H (ω)
(secondary path) LE
loudspeaker
+ _
+ FCF
e(t)
x(t) y(t) _ +
A ~ +
H LE
NG
x
~ x
H LE
error signal
prefilter
Figure 3. ANC in a duct by adaptive feedforward control with feedback cancellation and
error path identification for the filtered-x LMS algorithm.
After adaptation, the loudspeaker acts as a sound-soft reflector for the wave in-
cident from the left which is, hence, not absorbed but reflected to the left. With a
different control strategy the loudspeaker can be operated as an “active absorber”,
but the maximum possible absorption is half of the incident sound power; either one
quarter are reflected and transmitted. The reason is that it is not possible to achieve
perfect impedance matching with a single loudspeaker mounted at the duct wall. The
incident wave ‘sees’ the parallel connection of the loudspeaker input impedance and
the characteristic impedance of the ongoing part of the duct. (But a loudspeaker at
the end of a duct can be driven to perfectly absorb the incident sound [18].)
If the standing waves or the stronger sound propagation to the left in arrangements
as those in Figs. 2 and 3 cannot be tolerated, a true active absorber can be realised
with loudspeaker pairs or linear arrays [19,20].
A series of commercial ANC systems working on the principle of sound-soft reflec-
tion have been developed by the US company Digisonix and successfully installed
mainly in industrial exhaust stacks since 1987 [21]. The filters A and F CF are
combined to one recursive, infinite-impulse response (IIR) filter, often applying the
Feintuch algorithm [22]. The signal processors allow on-line operation at least up to
500 Hz, suppress tonal noise by up to 40 dB and broadband noise typically by 15 dB.
Similar systems have been installed also in Germany [23–25] and elsewhere [26]. The
lower frequency limit is given by pressure fluctuations of the turbulent flow, the upper
limit by the computational speed of the signal processor and the lateral dimensions of
the duct. The higher modes occurring at higher frequencies can also be cancelled, re-
quiring, however, a greater amount of hardware [27]; therefore, only few such systems
with multi-mode cancellation have been installed so far.
112 D. Guicking
primary sensor
desired signal sp +
_
+ . output
noise
adaptive filter
sr y(t)
A
reference sensor
Figure 4. Adaptive noise cancelling.
The filtered-x LMS algorithm is very popular because of its moderate signal pro-
cessing power requirement (the numerical complexity is O(2N ) if N is the filter
length), but its convergence is very slow for spectrally coloured random noise. Fan
noise spectra have typically a steep roll-off with increasing frequency so that the
convergence behaviour of the algorithm is often insufficient. Efforts have therefore
been made to develop algorithms the convergence behaviour of which is independent
of the signal statistics, but which can still be updated in real time. One example is
the SFAEST algorithm [28] which has a complexity of O(8N ). Since it furthermore
calculates the optimal filter coefficients in one single cycle, it is particularly useful for
nonstationary signals and nonstationary transfer functions. Stability problems in the
initialisation period could be solved by the FASPIS configuration which stands for
fast adaptive secondary path integration scheme [29,30]. More on algorithms can be
found in the books [31] and [32]. The very difficult extension of the fast algorithms
and the FASPIS configuration to IIR filters has been accomplished in the doctoral
thesis of R. Schirmacher [33].
The modern control theory provides advanced algorithms such as H∞ , H2 , fuzzy
control, optimal control, artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, to name just
a few. Overviews are presented, e. g., by the books [34] and [35].
An important concept in many fields of ANC is adaptive noise cancelling which
became widely known since 1975 by B. Widrow et al.’s seminal paper [36], see Fig. 4.
A ‘primary’ sensor picks up a desired signal which is corrupted by additive noise, its
output being sp . One or more ‘reference’ sensors are placed such that their output sr
is correlated (in some unknown way) with the primary noise, but does not essentially
contain the desired signal. Then, sr is adaptively filtered and subtracted from sp to
obtain a signal estimate with improved signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) since the adap-
tive filter decorrelates the output and sr . This concept, realised by a linear predictive
filter employing the least mean squares (LMS) algorithm, has been patented [37] and
found wide applications: in speech transmission from a noisy environment [38], in seis-
mic exploration [39], medical ECG diagnostics [40], noise cancelling stethoscopes [41],
speech enhancement in noisy environment [42], hearing aids [43], and many other
problems. In experimental cosmology, adaptive noise cancelling will be used in the
“Low-Frequency Array” (LOFAR) project for the detection of the 21-cm hydrogen
radiation from the early universe, which – by cosmic expansion – has been shifted to
about 2-m wavelength. The interference by the overwhelmingly stronger signals from
terrestric radio transmitters shall be eliminated adaptively [44].
In adaptive feedforward control systems as shown in Fig. 3 the sound propagation
path from microphone R to loudspeaker L must be long enough to provide the time
required for calculating the signal to be fed to L (causality condition). The limiting
factor is usually not the computation time in the signal processor but the group delay
in the antialiasing lowpass filters which are necessary in digital signal processing.
Problems in technical ANC applications are often posed by the loudspeakers. Very
high low-frequency noise levels are typically encountered in exhaust stacks or pipes,
demanding for high membrane excursions without nonlinear distortion and, often,
robustness against aggressive gases and high temperatures. On the other hand, a
smooth frequency response function (as for Hi-Fi boxes) is not an issue because fre-
quency irregularities can be accounted for by the adaptive filter. Special loudspeakers
for ANC systems have been developed [45–48].
2.5 Interaction of primary and secondary sources

The ANC systems discussed in the preceding sections are aimed at absorption or at
least reflection of the primary sound power, tacitly assuming that the primary power
radiation is not influenced by the cancellation sources. However, if it is possible to
reduce the primary sound production by the operation of the secondary sources, this
will be a particularly effective method of noise reduction.
A monopole radiator of radius a with a surface particle velocity v produces a
volume velocity q0 = 4πa2 v. The sound power radiated into a medium of density ρ
and sound velocity c at a frequency ω (wavelength λ, wave number k = 2π/λ) is
P0 = ρ ω 2 q02 /(4πc). Adding an equal but antiphase monopole at a distance d λ,
produces a dipole which radiates the power P1 = P0 (kd)2 /3. Supplementing this
dipole with another one to form a quadripole, the radiated power is further reduced
to P2 = P0 (kd)4 /15, assuming kd 1 [49, Chapter 7.1].
These conditions are correct if the volume velocity q is the same in all three cases,
but this is not necessarily so because ANC, by adding a compensation source in close
proximity, does not only raise the multipole order, but can also alter the radiation
impedance Zr = Rr + jωMr . The surrounding medium acts upon a monopole with
the radiation resistance Rr0 = 4πa2 ρc and the mass load Mr0 = 4πa3 ρ (three times
the replaced fluid mass), upon a dipole with Rr1 = Rr0 · (ka)2 /6 and Mr1 = Mr0 /6,
and on a quadripole with Rr2 = Rr0 · (ka)4 /45 and Mr2 = Mr0 /45 [49]. The mass
load leads to a reactive power, an oscillation of kinetic energy between primary and
secondary source (“acoustical short-circuit”). The product v 2 Rs determines the ra-
diated (active) power. The particle velocity v of the primary source depends on its
source impedance and the radiation resistance. A “low-impedance” source (sound
pressure nearly load independent) reacts on a reduced radiation resistance Rs with
enhanced particle velocity v so that the reduction of radiated power by the higher
multipole order is partially counteracted. But the sound radiation of impedance-
matched and of “high-impedance” (velocity) sources is reduced in the expected way
114 D. Guicking
by an antiphase source in the nearfield.

These relationships can be utilised, e. g., for the active reduction of noise from ex-
haust pipes (ships, industrial plants, automobiles with internal combustion engines).
A large demonstration project was implemented as early as 1980: the low-frequency
hum (20 to 50 Hz) from a gas turbine chimney stack was cancelled actively by a ring of
antisound sources [50]. Each loudspeaker was fed from one microphone pair through
amplifiers with fixed gain and phase settings. Such a simple open-loop control was
sufficient in this case due to the highly stationary noise and its narrow frequency
band.
The pulsating gas flow emanating from a narrow exhaust pipe is a very efficient
“high-impedance” monopole sound radiator; an adjacent antiphase source turns it
into a dipole or, in the case of a concentric annular gap around the exhaust mouth,
into a rotationally symmetric quadripole. Such “active mufflers” for cars have often
been proposed (e. g., Ref. [51]), but practical installations are still lacking, for tech-
nical and economical reasons: microphones and loudspeakers beneath the car body
must be protected against shock and vibration, splash water, thrown-up gravel and
the hot, aggressive exhaust gas [52]. Furthermore, active mufflers have to compete
with the highly efficient and comparatively cheap conventional mufflers from sheet
metal. Researchers in the muffler industry are, however, still developing and improv-
ing active systems, testing prototypes, and they are optimistic that active mufflers
might go into production because they combine noise cancellation with backpressure
reduction; perspectives to include sound quality design are seen, too [53].
2.6 Waveform synthesis for (quasi)periodic noise

A conceptually simple adaptive algorithm has been developed by a British research
team [51]. It assumes (quasi)periodic noise, the source of which is accessible for ob-
taining synchronisation pulses (e. g., vehicle engine noise). The principle is explained
in Fig. 5. A loudspeaker is mounted next to the exhaust pipe end, and is fed from a
waveform synthesiser, realised with digital electronics. An error microphone is placed
in the superposition zone and yields a control signal by which the loudspeaker output
is optimised. The sync pulses (obtained, e. g., by a toothed wheel and an inductive
probe) guarantee that the compensation signal tracks the changing engine rotation
speed automatically. The waveform is adapted using a trial-and-error strategy either
in the time domain or, faster, in the frequency domain. In the latter case, the ampli-
tudes and phases of the (low order) harmonics of the engine noise are adapted. The
prominent feature of this active system is that no microphone is required to receive
the primary noise because the signal processor performs the waveform synthesis by
itself. The loudspeaker must only provide the necessary acoustic power; resonances,
nonlinearities and ageing are automatically accounted for. A disadvantage is the
slower convergence as compared to “true” adaptive algorithms.
An example for a technical application of ANC with waveform synthesis in medicine
is a noise canceller for patients undergoing a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in-
spection. The electrical high-current impulses that are needed to build up the required
high magnetic fields cause, by magnetostriction and “wire forces”, an annoying im-
pulsive noise which is cancelled with the help of an active headset (see Section 2.7).
exhaust noise
error microphone
1
0
0
1 exhaust pipe
0
1
0
1 engine
0
1
compensation
sound
waveform 11
00
synchronisation pulse synthesiser
loudspeaker
Figure 5. Active cancellation of (quasi)periodic noise by tracking control with sync input
and waveform synthesis (after Ref. [51]).
Because no ferromagnetics and preferably no metal at all must be brought into the
MRI tube, pneumatic headsets with long plastic tubes as sound guides have been
developed for this purpose which are fed from a signal processor with a simple feed-
forward control and fixed filters [54]. Since, however, the compensation is not very
good, an improvement with a metal-free optical microphone for controlling an adap-
tive filter has been developed [55–57]. A different approach is aimed at controlling
the structural vibrations of the MRI tube walls [58,59].
2.7 Small volumes – Personal noise protection

An acoustically simple ANC problem is presented by an enclosure the dimensions
of which are small compared with the wavelength even at the highest frequencies
of interest. The sound pressure is then spatially almost constant, and the cancelling
source can be placed anywhere in the enclosure. Correctly fed, it acts as an active
absorber.
One such small enclosure is the space between a headphone and the ear drum.
The concept of “personal noise protection” by actively controlled headphones was
originally claimed in a Russian patent application [60], but reliable signal processing
was, in spite of intense research work in many countries, possible only very much
later. Independent developments by the US company Bose [61] and Sennheiser in
Germany [62] resulted in active headsets for aircraft pilots; active headsets are mean-
while also produced by other companies, being offered as pure hearing protectors in
open or closed construction, with feedforward and feedback control in analog elec-
tronics, and also with a signal input for telecommunication. The initially very costly
active headsets have become so much cheaper that a wider application in vehicles
and noisy working places appears realistic. Quite recently, also adaptive digital signal
processing has been applied to active headsets and hearing protectors [63].
2.8 Local cancellation

Placing an anti-source in the immediate nearfield of a primary noise source gives a
“global” effect as explained in Section 2.5, but if the distance of the two sources gets
wider, then only a local cancellation by interference remains [11]. Such systems did
not receive general attention as noise cancelers because of their very limited spatial
116 D. Guicking
~
1 1 R
R + 1−C 2 S
S
C Yr = R
A
A
C S Yl = L
1 1
L + 1−C 2 S ~
L
Figure 6. Crosstalk cancellation in head-related stereophonic sound field reproduction with

two loudspeakers by prefiltering. S = S(ω) and A = A(ω) are the nearside and farside
transfer functions, respectively, between loudspeakers and eardrums; circles to the left from
the loudspeakers indicate filters with inscribed transfer functions, C = C(ω) = −A(ω)/S(ω).
range of efficiency (in the order of λ/10). But local cancellation can be very useful
for acoustic laboratory experiments, such as head-related stereophony when dummy
head recordings are reproduced by two loudspeakers [64]. As the sound radiated from
the left loudspeaker should be received by the left ear only, a compensation signal
is superimposed onto the right channel which compensates the sound coming from
the left loudspeaker to the right ear, and vice versa, see Fig. 6. As compared to
the familiar source localisation between the loudspeakers of a conventional stereo
set, this procedure provides true three-dimensional sound field reproduction with
source localisation in any direction, including elevation, and also gives a reliable
depth impression.
Of great practical relevance is local active sound field cancellation for telecon-
ferencing and hands-free telephones (speakerphones) in order to eliminate, at the
microphone location, acoustic room echoes which degrade the speech quality and
tend to cause howling by self-excitation; the active system causes dereverberation of
the room response [65,66]. Echo cancellation and a speech enhancement system for
in-car communication are described in Ref. [67]. Echo cancellation for stereophonic
sound field reproduction is more involved than single channel applications. Solu-
tions are presented, e. g., in Refs. [68] and [69]. The psychoacoustic aspect of masking
was introduced in acoustic echo cancellation combined with perceptual noise reduc-
tion [70]. For echo cancellation in fast changing environments, a special algorithm has
been developed [71].
A hot topic in speech transmission with multiple not precisely known sound sources
is blind source separation, using microphone arrays and algorithms such as spatial
gradient estimation, independent component analysis (ICA), statistical source dis-
crimination, maximum likelihood, and Kalman filters; Ref. [72] presents a compre-
hensive survey.
A related older problem is the removal of electric line echoes in long-distance
telephony with satellite communication links where the long transmission path leads
to audible echoes which greatly disturb speech communication [73]. The signals are
reflected from an impedance mismatch at the so-called hybrid where the two-wire line
branches into the four-wire local subscriber cable. The geostationary satellites are
positioned at 36 000 km height so that the echo return path (transmitter → satellite
→ receiver → satellite → transmitter) is 4×36 000 km which yields, in spite of the
signal propagation at the speed of light, an echo delay time of as much as nearly
0.5 s. All satellite telephone links are therefore equipped with transmission line echo
compensators (see, e. g., Ref. [74]).
Locally effective ANC systems with compact microphone/loudspeaker systems in
feedback configuration were described by H. F. Olson [7] as early as 1956; they absorb
low-frequency sound in a narrow space around the microphone and were proposed for
aircraft passengers and machine workers [75]. Because of the very restricted spatial
field of efficiency, such systems did not receive general attention. In more recent
experiments the test persons disliked also the strong sound level fluctuations when
they moved their head.
The application of acoustic echo cancellation was also proposed for ultrasonic
testing where flaw echoes can be masked by strong surface echoes. It is possible
to subtract the latter from the received signal and so improve the detectability of
flaws [76,77]. Similarly, the ANC technique can be applied to cancel the reflection of
the ultrasonic echo from the receiver [78].
2.9 Three-dimensional sound fields in enclosures

The active cancellation of complex sound fields in large rooms, possibly with non-
stationary sources and time-varying boundary conditions, is far beyond the scope of
present ANC technology. More realistic is the concept of reducing room reverbera-
tion by placing active absorbers along the walls. The incident sound is picked up by
microphones which feed the loudspeakers so that their acoustic input impedance is
matched to the sound field. The situation is the same as in Fig. 1 if the enclosure walls
are considered as a Huygens surface. The loudspeakers can also be driven such that
their reflectivity takes arbitrary values in a wide frequency range (experimentally,
reflection coefficients between 0.1 and 3 have been realised). This would facilitate the
construction of a room with adjustable reverberation time [79], but at present still
with a prohibitive amount of hardware.
The concept of active impedance control was originally propagated by our Göttingen
team [80,81] and has stimulated many later research activities, (e. g., Refs. [82–86]).
Intensive research has been devoted to the active cancellation of sound in small
enclosures such as vehicle, aircraft and helicopter cabins. Four-stroke internal com-
bustion engines have an inherent unbalance at twice the rotational speed (the “second
engine order”) which often coincides with the fundamental cabin resonance of cars, so
exciting the highly annoying “boom”. Since this noise is strongly synchronised with
the engine speed its active cancellation is possible with a relatively small amount of
hardware and software [87]. It was, however, only offered in a production car for some
time by Nissan for their model Bluebird in Japan. Many other car manufacturers de-
velop their own systems, and some of them have successfully built prototypes, but all
of them are hesitating to install the ANC systems in series production (e. g., within
a “comfort package” at extra cost). One argument is that customers would complain
if they pay for noise reduction, and there still remains some disturbing noise.
118 D. Guicking
More involved than the “boom” control is the cancellation of the broadband rolling
noise, both inside and outside the car. Laboratory experiments and driving tests
have led to preliminary solutions; the nonstationarity of the noise input and of the
acoustic transfer functions demand for fast adapting algorithms, also for the error
path identification [29,33,88,89]. The noise and vibration problems are becoming more
severe with small low-consumption cars now under development; they will possibly
be equipped with both active noise control for the interior space and active vibration
control for the engine and wheel suspensions. For more luxurios cars the trend in the
automobile industry goes to combining ANC technology with “sound quality design”
for the car interior so that the driver has the choice, e. g., of a more silent car or a
more sportive sound [90–93].
For economical reasons, the aircraft industry has replaced jet engines by propeller
(or turboprop) aircraft for short and medium distances which are, however, much
louder in the cabin. Relatively little effort is necessary to employ a technology known
as synchrophasing. The eddy strings separating from the propeller blade tips hit the
fuselage and excite flexural vibrations of the hull which radiate sound into the cabin.
If the right and left propeller are synchronised so that their “hits” meet the fuselage
out of phase instead of simultaneously, then higher-order shell vibrations are excited
which radiate less and so reduce the noise level inside [94]. Better results, however
with more involved installations, are obtained with multichannel adaptive systems.
An international European research project with the acronym ASANCA has resulted
in a technical application [95].
An important issue in ANC applications to three-dimensional sound fields is the
placement of microphones and loudspeakers. Attention has to be paid not only to
causality, but also to observability and controllability, in particular in rooms with
distinct resonances and standing waves (modal control ). If, for some frequency, the
error microphone of an adaptive system is positioned in a sound pressure node,
it does not receive the respective frequency component or room mode so that no
cancelling signal will be generated and no adaptation is possible. If the loudspeaker
is placed in a node, then a compensation signal calculated by the processor cannot
be radiated effectively into the room, which usually forces the adaptive processor to
produce higher and higher signal amplitudes, finally leading to an overload error of
the digital electronics.
2.10 Freefield active noise control

Technical applications of ANC to three-dimensional exterior noise problems are still
quite rare, but many research projects have been reported and a number of patents
exist. The problems with active mufflers for cars with internal combustion engines
have been discussed in Section 2.5. A technically similar problem is the fly-over noise
of propeller aircraft which mainly consists of two components: the propeller blade
tip vortex threads, and the equally impulsive exhaust noise. If the exhaust tail pipe
is shifted to a position near to the propeller plane, and if the angular position of the
propeller on its shaft is adjusted so that in downward direction the pressure nodes
of one source coincide with the antinodes of the other one, then the destructive
interference reduces the fly-over noise by several dB [96].
A method for reducing traffic noise by cancelling the tyre vibrations of an auto-
mobile is disclosed in a patent [97], proposing electromagnetic actuation of the steel
reinforcement embedded into the tires.
A frequently investigated problem is the cancellation of power transformer noise,
the annoying hum of which consists of multiples of the power line frequency (50 Hz,
in USA 60 Hz). It is a seemingly simple problem because of the strong periodicity and
the readily accessible reference signal. Several methods have been proposed, either by
loudspeakers arranged around the site [98], by force input to the oil in which the trans-
former is immersed [99] or to the surrounding tank walls [100], or by sound insulating
active panels enclosing the transformer [101]. Experimental results are discussed in
Ref. [102]. Problems are posed, however, first, by the weather-dependent sound prop-
agation – wind and temperature gradients tilt the wave front [103] – and second,
because the hum spectrum depends on the electrical load of the transformer [104].
It has also been tried to actively improve sound shielding noise barriers along roads,
in particular to cancel the low frequency noise diffracted around the barrier top. The
idea is to place loudspeakers along the upper edge and to drive them with adaptive
feedforward control, the reference microphones being placed on the roadside and
the error microphones in the shadow zone [105]. Improvements are concerned with
multiple loudspeaker arrays also along the side walls of the noise barrier [106], or
multiple reference control and virtual error microphones [107].
3 Active vibration control (AVC)
3.1 Early applications

In contrast to active noise control, active vibration control has long been applied,
in particular to ships. Ref. [108] (1905) reports on vibration reduction on a steam
ship by synchronisation of the two engines in opposite phase, Ref. [109] (1934) on the
reduction of roll motion by an actively driven Frahm tank (water is pumped between
tanks located on the two sides of the ship), and Ref. [110] (1945) on roll stabilisation
by buoyancy control with “activated fins”, auxiliary rudders with variable angle of
attack protruding laterally from the ship hull into the water. The latter technology
is still applied today.
Active damping of aircraft skin vibrations was proposed by Ref. [111], providing
multichannel feedback control with displacement sensors and electromagnetic actua-
tors, mainly in order to prevent fatigue damage.
Early publications can also be found on the active control of vibrations in beams,
plates and composite structures. In mechanical wave filters where a desired longitu-
dinal wave mode in a bar is superimposed by an interfering detrimental flexural wave
mode, the latter can be damped by pairs of piezoelectric patches on either side of
the bar which are connected through an electrical resistor [112].
In special environments, e. g. ultrahigh vacuum, magnetic bearings without lu-
bricants are preferred for rotating machinery, but their inherent instability requires
feedback control which equally reduces vibrations [113].
An early NASA patent [114] provides an active mass damper (see Section 3.4) to
cancel structural vibration.
120 D. Guicking
In the 1980s, longitudinal vibrations of the ship superstructure caused by nonuni-

form propulsion were reduced with a type of dynamic absorber, realised by a cen-
trifugal pendulum. This is a pendulum swinging along the length direction of the
ship and rotating about an axis pointing also in lengthwise direction. The swinging
of the pendulum is synchronised to the ship’s vibration by controlling the rotational
frequency, and hence the centrifugal force, which together with gravity determines
its natural frequency [115].
3.2 AVC for beams, plates and structures

Aircraft and spacecraft have a great impact on investigations in active control of
structural vibration. Other than the above-mentioned whole-body vibrations of ships
which are comparatively easy to control due to their very low frequencies, one is here
confronted with elastic structures, i. e., continuous media with an infinite number of
degrees of freedom the control of which presents fundamentally different problems.
First, there are the different wave types in solids (of which longitudinal, torsional and
transversal waves are the most important); their control demands for various types
of actuators and sensors. Furthermore, the propagation speed is generally higher in
solids than in air so that causality problems occur with broadband adaptive feedfor-
ward controllers. As a consequence, many problems are treated with modal control
where, especially in case of overlapping modes, the “control spillover” problem has to
be considered: the unwanted excitation of additional modes the resonance curves of
which extend to the controlled frequency. In Fig. 7 it is assumed that the N th mode,
resonant at frequency fN , shall be controlled; the tails of the neighbouring resonance
curves have nonnegligible amplitudes at fN (the dots on the dashed line) and are
therefore also excited by the control signal at fN , to some extent. Owing to the phase
slope around a resonance, the neighbouring modes are usually enhanced rather than
damped when the N th mode is suppressed. While control spillover leaves the system
stable, “observation spillover” can produce instability [116].
For satellites, the damping of modal vibrations is important after pointing position
manoeuvres etc. since they are built from low-loss materials, and air friction is not
present in space. The optimisation of number and placement of sensors and actuators
for the mostly applied adaptive feedback controllers requires precise knowledge of
the structural dynamics so that reliable modelling in state-space coordinates and a
realistic estimation of discretisation errors are possible. An introduction to this field
is given by Meirovitch [116].
Damping and stiffness control in mechanical junctions can also be achieved by dry
friction control where the pressing force is controlled by a piezoelectric actuator, in
feedforward or feedback control, typically by a nonlinear algorithm, e. g. a neural
network [117], or by on–off control [118].
In aircraft technology, active controllers have been developed for manoeuvre [119]
and gust load alleviation [120], as well as for wing flutter control [121], and for noise
and vibration reduction in helicopters [122], in particular by individual blade con-
trol (IBC) [123] and higher harmonic control (HHC) [124]. A major German research
initiative was the “Adaptive Wing Project” [125], aimed at aircraft drag reduction
by boundary layer and flow separation control with the help of wing shape control,
mode
mode
N −1 .
N
mode
N +1
amplitude
.
.
frequency
f f f
N −1 N N +1
Figure 7. Spillover: attempting to control mode N at its resonance frequency fN also

excites neighbouring modes N − 1 and N + 1 with lower, but finite amplitudes.
realised by an adjustable lengthwise tiny bump near the trailing edge of the wing,
with piezoelectric or shape memory alloy actuators.
Initially, technical problems were encountered, among others, by the fact that sen-
sor and actuator materials such as piezoceramics, piezopolymers, electro- and mag-
netostrictive materials, shape memory alloys, electro- and magnetorheological fluids
are no constructional materials with a mechanical strength sufficient for load-bearing
structures; some of them are also too brittle or too weak for fail-safe operation. This
led to a new research field since the end of the 1980s: the development of modern com-
pound materials with embedded sensors and actuators (keywords are intelligent (or
smart) materials, bi-functional elements, adaptive (or smart) structures, adaptron-
ics, structronics) [126–128]. Much information on these research fields is published in
the special journals “Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures” (since
1990), “Smart Structures and Materials” (since 1992), in the Proceedings of the “In-
ternational Conferences on Adaptive Structures and Technologies (ICAST)”, and of
the “Adaptronic Congresses” held in Germany since 1996.
Active vibration control has found a popular application in digital cameras with
image stabilisation. The image blur by camera shake during the exposure is avoided
by actively shifting the position of the CCD chip with a piezo-actuator, in response
to a motion sensor signal [129].
3.3 Active vibration isolation

Possibilities for active noise control in road vehicles have been discussed in Sec-
tion 2.9. The predominant sources of interior noise are engine and wheel vibrations
which propagate as structure-borne sound through the car body and finally radiate
airborne sound into the cabin. It is therefore reasonable to develop active engine
mounts and active shock absorbers which are stiff enough to carry the static load,
but dynamically resilient so that vibrations are not transmitted. Piezoceramic ac-
tuators are suited for excursions in the submillimetre range [130]; for larger ampli-
tudes and forces at frequencies of a few Hertz, hydraulic and pneumatic actuators
are available [131]. Compact and robust combinations of conventional rubber mounts
122 D. Guicking
with electrodynamically driven hydraulics have been constructed as “active hydro-

mounts” for a wide frequency range [132]. Active mounts are, for example, standard
components of the DaimlerChrysler Mercedes CL Coupé [133].
In helicopter cabins, the principal noise source is the gear box, the vibrations of
which are transmitted through typically 7 struts to the cabin roof (as structure-borne
sound), and then radiated into the cabin as airborne sound. Particularly annoying
are tonal components between 700 Hz and 4 kHz. The vibration transmission has
been reduced by piezoelectric actuators at the struts so that the noise level in the
cabin became much lower, as was verified in ground tests. The development towards
a technical product is a current research topic [134].
Active control technology was applied for improved vibration isolation of tables for
optical experiments, scanning microscopes, vibration sensitive semiconductor manu-
facturing stages, etc. Commercial products are offered by several companies, e. g.,
Newport (USA), Technical Manufacturing Corporation (TMC, USA), Halcyonics
(Germany), and Integrated Dynamics Engineering (IDE, Germany); the latter com-
pany also offers active compensation systems for magnetic strayfields which is impor-
tant for high resolution electron microscopes etc. Information is available from the
companies’ homepages.
For satellite missions, sophisticated controllers have been designed to actively
isolate facilities for microgravity experiments from structural vibrations which are
caused by position controllers and other on-board machinery [130,135].
The performance of hydraulic shock absorbers can be improved by applying elec-
trorheological fluids (ERF) [136]. ERF are fine suspensions of polarisable small di-
electric particles in an unpolar basic fluid, e. g., polyurethane in low-viscosity silicone
oil [137]. Their viscosity can be adjusted reversibly between watery and pasty by
applying electrical fields of several kV/mm.
Also suitable are magnetorheological fluids (MRF), suspensions of small ferromag-
netic particles in a basic fluid, requiring a magnetic field for the viscosity to be
changed. The field is usually applied by electromagnets which require a high electric
current instead of a high voltage [138]. In order to provide a wide range of viscosity
control, the viscosities of the basic fluids selected for ERF and MRF are as low as
possible, which leads to sedimentation problems, in particular with MRF because of
its specifically heavier particles than in ERF.
Nevertheless, much research is focusing on MRF applications: earthquake protec-
tion of buildings [139], journal bearings of rotating machinery [140], truss structures in
spacecraft [141], vehicle suspensions [142], sandwich beams [143], cable swaying [144],
adjustable dynamic absorbers for flexible structures [145], squeeze film dampers [146],
and many other systems.
3.4 Civil engineering structures

Wind-induced swaying of tall, high-rise buildings can amount to amplitudes of sev-
eral metres in the upper floors. This low-frequency sway can be reduced by tuned
mass dampers (TMD) acting as resonance absorbers: masses of about 1% of the total
mass of the building are placed on the top floor and coupled to the building structure
through springs and dampers. Their performance is raised by actively enhancing the
relative motion. A prominent example where such an active TMD has been installed
is the Citycorp Center in New York [147]. Less additional mass is required for aero-
dynamic appendages, protruding flaps that can be swivelled and utilise wind forces
like sails to exert cancelling forces on the building [148].
Many research activities in the USA, Canada and in particular Japan are aimed at
the development of active earthquake protection for buildings where, however, severe
technical problems have still to be solved [149,150].
For slim structures such as antenna masts, bridges etc., tendon control systems
have been constructed for the suppression of vibrations by controlled tensile forces
acting in different diagonal directions [151,152].
3.5 Active and adaptive optics
The quality of pictures taken with optical or radio astronomical mirror telescopes
depends essentially on the precision to which the optimal mirror shape is maintained.
Modern swivelling large telescopes suffer from deformation under their own weight
which is compensated more efficiently by active shape control than by additional
stiffeners which inevitably enhance the mass of the structure. This technology is
called active optics [153,154].
While the telescope motions are very slow (time constants above 0.1 s) and there-
fore easy to control, adaptive optics have solved the more complicated problem of
controlling picture blurring by atmospheric turbulence, the so-called seeing which
fluctuates at frequencies about 1000 Hz. The large primary mirror is fixed, but the
smaller secondary mirror surface rests on a matrix of piezoceramic actuators which
are adjusted by an adaptive multichannel controller so that a reference star is op-
timally focused. If no reference star exists in the vicinity of the observed object an
artificial guide star can be created by resonance scattering of an intense laser beam
from sodium atoms at about 100 km height [155,156]. Adaptive optics have improved
the optical resolution of the best infrared telescopes by a factor of 10 to 50, to almost
the diffraction limit.
This technology was developed in the USA during the 1970s for the military SDI
project and has been declassified not before 1991 when civil research had reached al-
most the same state [157]. Meanwhile, this technology is applied to nearly all modern
large optical infrared telescopes such as the Gemini North Telescope on top of the
Mauna Kea on Hawaii [158] and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, and will
be applied to even larger telescopes planned for the future [159,160].
Adaptive optical mirrors have also found applications in industrial production for
laser cutting and welding [161], and generally for optimising the quality of high-
intensity laser beams [162,163]. Other non-astronomical fields of adaptive optics ap-
plication are confocal microscopy [164], spatial light modulators (SLM) for optical
telecommunication [165], and ophthalmology [166]. Most of the small deformable mir-
rors are manufactured as micromechanical systems (MEMS) (e. g., Ref. [167]). A sur-
vey of industrial and medical applications of adaptive optics is presented in Ref. [168].
The growing importance of this field can also be seen in the fact that many textbooks
on adaptive optics have been published [169–173].
124 D. Guicking
3.6 Noise reduction by active structural control
Active control of structural vibrations and active control of sound fields have been
developed almost independently, including differing control concepts (mostly feedfor-
ward in acoustics, mostly feedback in vibration). But since some time the two fields
have become connected. Many noise problems result from radiation of structure-borne
sound, e. g. into the interior of cars and aircraft, on ships, by vibrating cladding panels
of machines, etc. Here comes into action a concept known under the acronym ASAC
(Active Structural Acoustic Control) [174] where noise reduction is not attained by
superimposing airborne sound to the disturbing noise field but by controlling the
vibrating structure itself. This is possible by suitably placed and controlled actua-
tors to suppress the structural vibration, although this is not necessarily the optimal
solution.
Acoustically relevant
√ are mainly plate bending waves which due to their frequency
dispersion (cB ∝ ω) are non-radiating at low frequencies and strongly radiating
above the critical frequency ωg at which the bending wave velocity equals the sound
velocity c0 in the surrounding medium. If cB < c0 , the acoustical short-circuit be-
tween adjacent wave crests and troughs yields a weak sound radiation into the far-
field, but
√ for cB > c0 a very effective radiation results. The proportionality factor in
cB ∝ ω contains the flexural stiffness so that its modification shifts the critical fre-
quency and can turn radiating modes into non-radiating ones (modal restructuring).
Much work has been done to investigate how, e. g. by laminates from sheet metal and
piezolayers as sensors and actuators, adaptive structures can be constructed which
can suppress, in propeller aircraft etc., the above-mentioned fuselage excitation by
eddy threads, so enabling a substitution for or at least a supplement to the more
involved (and heavier) direct noise control by mirophone/loudspeaker systems [175–
177].
3.7 Sound transmission control
Sound transmission through walls, windows, sound shielding plates etc. is effectively
controlled by active means. This is often achieved by ASAC (see preceding section),
but in some instances also by different means. Experiments have shown that sound
transmission through double-glazed windows can be reduced by actively controlled
loudspeakers in the gap between the glass panes [178]. Actively controlled double wall
partitions are also reported in Refs. [179] and [180], the latter one for insulating floor
impulsive noise.
The favourite actuators for active structural damping are piezoceramics, bonded
to the structure to form adaptive (smart) structures [181]. Semi-active approaches
apply passive (sometimes actively controlled) shunts across the piezoactuators to
save energy [182,183], or even to gain electrical energy from the vibrated piezos, a
rather new technology labelled “energy harvesting” or “energy scavenging” [184,185].
3.8 Control of nonlinear dynamical systems
The control of nonlinear dynamical systems has gained much attention in recent
years, due to the great potential of applications in physics, enginering, medicine, and
communication.
Of practical importance is the control of magnetic bearings to stabilise a rotor in its
unstable equilibrium by feedback control. Being frictionless and free from lubricants,
magnetic bearings are often applied in vacuum apparatus (also in spacecraft) such
as high-speed centrifuges (e. g., Ref. [186]).
A particular realm of research is chaos control, forcing a chaotic oscillation into
a stable periodic orbit [187,188]. Major control concepts are 1) feedforward con-
trol [189]; 2) feedback control by applying small perturbations to an accessible system
parameter when the trajectory comes close to the unstable periodic orbit where it is
desired to stabilise the system, the so-called OGY control, named after the protag-
onists of this method [190]; 3) Time Delay Autosynchronisation or Delayed Feedback
Control, where the feedback signal is the difference of the actual and a previous out-
put signal of the chaotic system [191]; and 4) sliding mode control [192]. An early form
of the delayed feedback control concept was formulated in the theory of balancing
rods by humans and bicycle riding [193].
A medical application is the stabilisation of atrial fibrillation, a chaotic rapid os-
cillation of blood flow in the heart vestibules [194].
A potential application of chaos control is secure communication by masking the
message with a broadband chaotic carrier at the transmitter site and demasking it at
the receiver site by synchronising the chaotic transmitter and receiver oscillators [195].
An extension of delayed feedback control is Multiple Delay Feedback Control where
the feedback signal contains more than one previous observables. This concept was
applied successfully, e. g., to the stabilisation of a Colpitts oscillator and a frequency-
doubled solid state laser [196].
Related to chaos control is bifurcation control; an overview outlining the theory,
control concepts, and potential applications is given in Ref. [197].
While most applications of chaos control are aimed at converting an unpredictable
process to a regular one, some other situations favour the transition of regular to
chaotic behaviour (anticontrol or chaotification ), such as in combustion engines where
chaos (here: turbulence) enhances the mixing of fuel and air and so leads to better
performance. Another example where the forced transition of regular oscillation into
chaotic motion is beneficial is the improvement of a neural network by state feedback
control [198].
For more information about the subject see the article of U. Parlitz in this book [199].
4 Active flow control
Coherent active control technology is also applied to other fields than sound and
structural vibrations, among which the physics of fluid flow is gaining more and
more importance. One of the many interactions of sound and flow is the transition
from laminar flow of a slim gas flame into turbulence by insonification. Conversely,
126 D. Guicking
the turbulence of a flame was suppressed actively by feedback control with a micro-
phone/loudspeaker system [200].
Laboratory experiments have shown since about 1982 that the transition from lam-
inar to turbulent flow can be shifted to higher Reynolds numbers by controlling the
Tollmien-Schlichting waves in the boundary layer, thereby providing drag reduction
which is of great technical relevance. This can be achieved with thermal inputs [201],
or by acoustical or vibrational excitation [202–204].
Also, the dangerous surge and stall in compressors, resulting from instabilities, can
be suppressed acoustically [205].
An ionised gas stream in a combustion chamber (as in a rocket) tends to produce
unstable resonance oscillations which can be suppressed by an appropriately con-
trolled electric d.c. current through the ionised gas, employing a feedback controller
with a photoelectric cell as oscillation sensor [206].
A micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) to be mounted on fan blades is pre-
sented in Ref. [207], comprising a turbulence sensor, an integrated circuit, and an
actuator by which turbulence noise can either be reduced, or – in the case of heat
exchangers – amplified in order to improve heat transfer. Experiments on this inter-
esting technique are described in Ref. [208], reporting flight control of a delta wing
aircraft, and in Ref. [209] where the laminar/turbulent transition is influenced along
the wing profile in a wind tunnel.
Blade-vortex interaction causing the rattling impulsive noise from helicopters can
be reduced by controlling flaps at the trailing edges [210]. Also, helicopter stall can
be controlled by trailing-edge flaps [211], or by plasma actuators [212]. In a further
development, tip vortices of helicopter blades, aircraft foils, or marine propellers can
be reduced by air injection to the high-pressure side of the lifting body [213,214].
Dynamic stabilisation of jet-edge flow with various adaptive linear feedback control
strategies was experimentally verified by Ref. [215]. Disturbing resonances in a large
wind tunnel with free-jet test section (the so-called Göttingen model) can be sup-
pressed by feedback ANC, employing multiple loudspeakers [216]. Active flow control
can also provide a low-frequency high-intensity sound source, utilising an aeroacoustic
instability [217,218].
Conclusions
Coherent active control systems are commercially applied in acoustics in certain

problem areas, but only in acoustically somehow “simple” situations: small volume,
one-dimensional sound propagation, quasiperiodic noise, isolated modes. There are
many more applications in vibration technology, but there are also fields where the
non-application of a well-developed technique is at first sight surprising, among them
flutter control of aircraft wings which has been successfully tried since more than
30 years. Here the flutter limit would be shifted to a higher flight speed, but this is
not practised from safety considerations: if the active controller fails, and that cannot
be excluded with such complex systems, the danger of wing fracture and hence an air
crash would be too high. This is a general problem; precautions have to be taken in
safety-relevant applications where failure of the active control system must not have
10 000
5 000
2 000
1 000
500
number of publications per 5 years
rs
ea
5y
200
ry
ve
ge
100
lin
ub
do
50
20
10
1
1927−31
1932−36
1937−41
1942−46
1947−51
1952−56
1957−61
1962−66
1967−71
1972−76
1977−81
1982−86
1987−91
1992−96
5−year period
Figure 8. Five-year cumulants of ANVC publications, based on the author’s data files.
catastrophic consequences.
The general interest in active control of noise and vibration has been steadily
increasing, a fact which can also be concluded from the growing number of textbooks,
special conferences and journal papers per year. Based on the author’s collection of
more than 12 000 references on active control of sound and vibration [219,220], Fig. 8
shows a histogram of the number of publications grouped in five-year periods. An
exponential increase is observed from the 1950s through the early 1980s with doubling
every 5 years, followed by further growth at reduced pace (approximately doubling
in ten years). There are nearly twice as many papers on active vibration control than
on active sound field control, and there are about 7% patent applications. This is
relatively high for a research topic and proves the considerable commercial interest.
128 D. Guicking
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The single bubble – a hot microlaboratory

W. Lauterborn, T. Kurz, R. Geisler, D. Kröninger, and D. Schanz
Abstract. Experimental and numerical work on single bubbles in liquids, mostly water, is
presented. The oscillation properties of acoustically driven bubbles from periodic motion to
period-doubling and chaotic dynamics are reviewed. Optic cavitation as a means to prepare
single bubble states in conjunction with high-speed optical observations is shown to enable
detailed investigations of bubble dynamics, in particular, fast bubble collapse at various
conditions. In this way, shock wave and light emission, jet and counter-jet formation near
solid walls and the associated erosive action on the surface could be elucidated. Molecular
dynamics studies are presented that allow a numerical view into the bubble interior that
hitherto is not accessible by experiments.
1 Introduction
A single bubble in a liquid is a remarkable object. In many cases it attains a spherical

shape due to surface tension and floats around in the liquid driven by the various
forces that it is susceptible to, notably pressure forces of all kinds from static to
acoustic, from buoyancy to drag. A single bubble, in a sense, is an artificial object, as
it likes to come in clouds and swarms. However, the single bubble is the building block
and starting point for describing more complex bubble configurations. Moreover,
through the concentrated effort of many a scientist it has been tamed to be kept
in place in a bubble trap for closer inspection [1], similar to the optical tweezer for
objects susceptible to electromagnetic forces (light waves) or the ion trap for keeping
ions in place with electric forces.
2 Single bubble in a sound field
It has been found that bubbles can be generated in liquids by sufficiently strong
sound fields, a process called acoustic cavitation. The bubbles formed subsequently
react to the pressure variations in the sound field. Sufficiently small bubbles attain a
spherical shape due to the surface tension of the liquid and start to oscillate radially.
Indeed, they can be considered as nonlinear oscillators driven by the varying pressure
of the sound. When dispensing with other forces (as buoyancy, for instance) tractable
models for the oscillation of a spherical bubble in a sound field can be formulated
with varying degree of sophistication.
140 W. Lauterborn et al.
liquid pe
κ
Rn
pi σ
ρ, µ
Figure 1. Descriptors for a spherical bubble: bubble radius R(t), rest radius Rn , internal
pressure pi , external pressure pe . Parameters of the liquid: density ρ, viscosity µ, and
surface tension σ. The bubble medium is characterized by the polytropic exponent κ.
2.1 Bubble models

To formulate a bubble model, various parameters of the liquid surrounding the bub-
ble and of the gas and vapour contents inside the bubble need to be specified. For
a spherical bubble the dependent variables can be condensed to just one, the bubble
radius R whose variation with time t has to be determined, R(t). The model param-
eters as used here are given in Fig. 1. Besides R these are the radius of the bubble at
rest, Rn , the external pressure in the liquid, pe , and the pressure inside the bubble,
pi , further the polytropic exponent of the gas in the bubble, κ, and ρ, µ, and σ, the
density, the viscosity, and the surface tension of the liquid, respectively.
The simplest model is the Rayleigh model [2]:
3
ρRR̈ + ρṘ2 = pi − pe , (1)
2
where an overdot means differentiation with respect to time. The difference in pres-
sure, pi −pe , drives the bubble motion. The form of the inertial terms on the left-hand
side is due to the spherical three-dimensional geometry that is transformed to one
radial dimension in the differential equation. Both, pi and pe , become functions of
radius R and time t, when gas and vapour fill the bubble, and when surface tension
σ, liquid viscosity µ, and a sound field are taken into account. With these inclusions
the Rayleigh model takes the form [3–6]:
3κ
3 Rn 2σ 4µ
ρRR̈ + ρṘ2 = pgn + pv − pstat − − Ṙ − p(t) , (2)
2 R R R
with
2σ
pgn = + pstat − pv , (3)
Rn
Rn being the equilibrium radius, pstat the static pressure, pv the (constant) vapour
The single bubble – a hot microlaboratory 141
pressure, and
p(t) = −p̂a sin ωt , (4)
the acoustic pressure, taken here to vary sinusoidally, with angular frequency ω and
pressure amplitude p̂a . This model and some variants are called Rayleigh–Plesset
models.
In this work we widely use the Gilmore model [7] that incorporates sound radiation
into the liquid from the oscillating bubble, whose surface acts like the membrane of a
spherical loudspeaker. It is further augmented by a van der Waals law [8] to account
for a noncompressible volume of the inert gas inside the bubble. This bubble model
reads:
! ! ! !
Ṙ 3 Ṙ 2 Ṙ Ṙ Ṙ dH
1− RR̈ + 1− Ṙ = 1 + H+ 1− R , (5)
C 2 3C C C C dR
where
Z p|r=R
dp(ρ)
H = , (6)
p|r→∞ ρ
n
ρ
p(ρ) = A −B, (7)
ρ0
3 κ
Rn − bRn3

2σ 2σ 4µ
p|r=R = pstat + − − Ṙ , (8)
Rn R3 − bRn3 R R
p|r→∞ = pstat + p(t) , (9)
p
C = c0 2 + (n − 1)H . (10)
The additional parameters and variables in this model are the sound velocity in the
liquid at normal conditions, c0 , the sound velocity at the wall of the bubble, C, the
enthalpy, H, the parameters of the equation of state, where b is the van der Waals
constant, and the Tait equation (7) is chosen for the liquid with its parameters A,
B, and n [9].
2.2 Oscillation properties

Both models described so far consist of just one ordinary differential equation of
first order, however a strongly nonlinear one. They can be viewed as describing a
nonlinear oscillator, but one with really peculiar properties, for instance a varying
mass during the oscillation. This leads to special oscillation features, in particular
extremely strong collapses of the bubble at elevated acoustic forcing.
The equations of motion for the bubble radius as a function of time can be solved
after initial conditions for the radius and for the velocity of the bubble wall have been
specified. This has been done for a substantial part of the parameter space [6,10,11].
The main parameters of interest are the bubble radius at rest, Rn , and the sound
field parameters pressure amplitude, p̂a , and sound field (circular) frequency, ω. The
other parameters are connected with the properties of the liquid outside the bubble
and the gas or gases and the vapour of the liquid inside the bubble.
Figure 2. Synopsis of the steady-state radial oscillations of a bubble in water as a function

of acoustic driving pressure. The bubble’s equilibrium radius is 7 µm, the driving frequency,
25 kHz. The maximum radius strongly increases for pressures above 1 bar, which is the
static pressure in the liquid.
Closed analytical solutions to the above bubble models are not known. Numerical
solutions, on the other hand, are easily obtained today. When starting at some initial
condition the bubble oscillator responds with transients until it settles to a steady
state determined by the damping. Figure 2 gives a sequence of steady-state radius-
time curves for a bubble of 7 µm radius at rest driven by a sound field of 25 kHz at
various sound pressure amplitudes from 0.7 bar to 1.7 bar. The variation from an
almost sinusoidal oscillation of small amplitude to one with strong elongation, fast
collapse and afterbounces at compression is demonstrated.
All oscillations in the figure repeat after one oscillation of the sound field. This
need not be the case [6]. The steady state oscillation may only be stably reached after
two periods of the sound field, or four or eight. Indeed, the period of the steady state
oscillation may go to infinity despite periodic driving of the bubble. The oscillation
is then said to be chaotic, as it never repeats, albeit everything is deterministic.
Acoustically driven bubbles follow a period-doubling route to chaos, where upon
altering a parameter (either bubble radius at rest or sound field frequency or sound
pressure amplitude) the bubble oscillation doubles its period at ever finer alteration,
so that chaotic oscillations are reached at a finite parameter value. Examples of the
period-doubling route to chaos are given in Lauterborn and Parlitz [12] and Parlitz
et al. [10], for instance. Indications of this behaviour can already be found in an
early paper by Lauterborn [6].
2.3 Response curves
Oscillators are often described by response curves. In linear systems the amplitude of
the (then sinusoidal) steady state oscillation is plotted versus the driving frequency
to give the amplitude response curve or resonance curve. It shows just one peak,
the resonance, when the damping is sufficiently small. With nonlinear oscillators
this main resonance starts to lean over to higher or lower frequencies of the driving,
eventually developing hysteresis, where there exist two steady states at the same
frequency of the driving each with its own basin of attraction (set of initial condi-
tions) leading to the respective steady state (attractor). Such basins can be found in
Parlitz et al. [10]. Moreover, additional resonances appear at or near rational num-
bers of the ratio of driving frequency and linear resonance frequency of the bubble,
called harmonic resonances, subharmonics resonances and ultraharmonic (or ultra-
subharmonic) resonances [6]. They also may show hysteresis. And even more, period
doubling sets in along with the resonances with incomplete (“period bubbling”) and
complete routes to chaos.
Figure 3 shows a set of response curves with the bubble radius at rest as the con-
trol parameter instead of the driving sound field frequency. The maximum relative
response, (Rmax − Rn )/Rn , for a driving frequency of 20 kHz and for sound pres-
sure amplitudes from 10 to 70 kPa is plotted versus Rn . The emerging peaks are
resonances that can be labelled with two numbers, the torsion number and the pe-
riod number (both natural numbers) [6,10]. Two sets of resonances are to be seen:
the large peaks that fall off towards lower radii, labeled with a ‘1’ in the denomi-
1.6
1.4 1/1
1.2
(Rmax - Rn) / Rn
1 2/1
3/1
0.8
4/1
5/1 3/2
0.6
6/1 5/2 1/2
0.4
70 kPa
0.2
0
10 20 50 100 200 500
Rn [ µm ]
Figure 3. Response curves for bubbles of different sizes subject to driving at a fixed
frequency of 20 kHz. Driving amplitudes are 10 (bottom curve), 30, 50, and 70 kPa (upper
curve). Initial condition is the respective bubble at rest. The logarithmic radius scale
stretches the harmonic resonances for better viewing.
nator, and the smaller ones in between, labeled with a ‘2’ in the denominator. The
first set constitutes the main resonance (resonance of order 1/1) and the harmonic
resonances of order n/1 with n = 2, 3, . . . , given by the period number 1 and the
torsion numbers n > 1. The second set belongs to the set of subharmonic resonances,
starting with the main subharmonic resonance, 1/2, to the right of the main reso-
nance, and going on with the 3/2, 5/2, 7/2 resonances (also called ultrasubharmonic
or ultraharmonic resonances) to the left of the main resonance. The appearance
of the nonlinear resonances follows a Farey tree [10]. For proper visualization of
the sequence of resonances that cluster towards smaller bubble radii the Rn scale is
logarithmic.
There appear straight vertical dotted lines in the diagram. At these radii Rn the
steady state oscillation behaves nonmonotonously with the bubble radius at rest. The
reason is the overturning of the resonances leading to a small or a large amplitude
oscillation depending on the initial condition chosen. In the language of nonlinear
dynamical systems theory [12] there are two coexisting attractors. They span a re-
gion of hysteresis, a region where two different oscillations are stable. Each of the
attractors then has a set of initial conditions from where it is approached: its basin
of attraction. The diagram was calculated with the respective bubble starting from
its rest position (R = Rn , Ṙ = 0). Then just one of the two attractors will be reached
and the jump occurs when the boundary between the two basins of attraction sweeps
over the rest position upon varying the parameter, here Rn .
When driving the bubbles stronger, the resonances as shown in Fig. 3 fill with
period-doubling cascades to chaos and sudden onset of chaotic oscillations (Fig. 4).
Also a giant response occurs for smaller bubble radii. Surface tension has a strong
9
8
7 130 kPa
(Rmax - Rn) / Rn
6
5
4 3/1 2/1 1/1
3
2
2/1
1 70 kPa
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Rn [ µm ]
Figure 4. Response ‘curve’ for bubbles of different sizes driven at a fixed frequency of
20 kHz with p̂a = 130 kPa. For comparison the response for p̂a = 70 kPa is also given. The
linear radius scale is chosen for properly demonstrating the giant response near Rn ≈ 5 µm.
influence in this region through forcing the sudden, but smooth, decay that occurs
at lower bubble radii. Without surface tension this decay would be missing and the
response would level off at a high expansion oscillation. To put the giant response
at small bubble radii into perspective, Fig. 4 gives the response for p̂a = 130 kPa
and 70 kPa at 20 kHz for bubbles from 1 µm to 100 µm on a linear radius scale. The
by far greater amplitude of the giant response with respect to the main resonance is
easily noticed. The relation gets even more pronounced at higher driving amplitudes.
However, then the radial oscillation stability may be lost as is inevitable at sufficiently
strong driving.
2.4 Parameter space diagrams

The response curves already condense the information on the oscillation properties of
a bubble as not the full oscillation is retained but only the maximum elongation, or
a set of points in the case of a chaotic oscillation. An even more condensed survey of
information on the response of a bubble to a sound field can be given in the form of
a parameter space diagram, often also called phase diagram (Fig. 5). There, over a
space of parameters, best only two parameter variables, just the type of the resulting
oscillation is plotted into the respective volume (area). The areas are determined
by the boundaries of the bifurcation sets of the bubble oscillators. The type of
oscillation inside these boundaries may be colour coded for better vision or elsewise
made discernable. Oscillation types are, for instance, discerned by the period of the
resulting oscillation, that is period 1 or period 2, or generally period n, where n can
be any natural number up to infinity. Also, chaotic oscillations may be classified
Figure 5. Parameter space diagram obtained with the Keller-Miksis bubble model de-
picting the periodicity properties of bubble oscillations in the (Rn , p̂a )-parameter plane
(calculation by P. Koch).
by types according to from which resonance they sprang off. Phase diagrams for
bubble oscillators can be found in Parlitz et al. [10]. Figure 5 presents a parameter
space diagram calculated with the Keller-Miksis model [13] in the (Rn , p̂a )-parameter
space. The harmonic resonances shown form building blocks of period prolongation
that repeat with each harmonic resonance.
2.5 Single bubble in an acoustic trap

A single bubble can be trapped in the pressure antinode of a standing sound field [1].
This facilitates experiments with single bubbles considerably. The bubble oscilla-
tions [14], the shock wave emission [15] and the light emission [16] have been studied
thereby in great detail. The simplest arrangement consists of a rectangular glass cu-
vette with just one piezoelectric transducer glued to the bottom as shown in Fig. 6.
The thin wire sticking into the cuvette from the upper left side is of platinum and
serves as bubble generator via a current pulse for introducing a bubble to be trapped
into the liquid. A stably trapped bubble is to be seen by its bluish light emission. As
the bubble oscillation repeats itself with great precision each acoustic cycle, whereby
the bubble also keeps its position, the bubble can be photographed with high reso-
lution in time and space by use of a long distance microscope. Figure 7 shows one
cycle of a bubble oscillation driven at 24.1 kHz and taken in backlight conditions.
The time difference from one frame to the next is 500 ns. The spherical bubble shows
Figure 6. Photograph of a cubical bubble trap with the transducer glued to the bottom.
The bluish point in the middle of the upper part of the cuvette is the light emitted by a
stably oscillating bubble. Exposure time 20 min.
Figure 7. Photographic series of a trapped sonoluminescing bubble driven at 21.4 kHz.

Time between frames: 500 ns, frame size: 160 µm by 160 µm. As the bubble oscillates very
stably, the images were taken one by one (exposure time 5 ns) with increasing delay and
assembled into the series lateron.
black on a brighter background as the illuminating light is deflected off the bubble
surface. A slow growth of the bubble and a fast collapse with several afterbounces
are observed. From the photographic images the varying radius of the bubble can be
measured and compared with theoretical models of bubble oscillation. Figure 8 shows
a comparison for a bubble trapped in a water-glycerine mixture driven at 21.4 kHz
and 132 kPa (measured values). The data input to the Gilmore model are: ambient
pressure p0 =100 kPa, vapour pressure pv =0 kPa, equilibrium radius Rn =8.1 µm,
density of the liquid ρ =1000 kg/m3 , viscosity µ =0.0018 Ns/m2 (measured) and sur-
face tension σ =0.0725 N/m. The gas within the bubble is assumed to obey the
adiabatic equation of state for an ideal gas with κ =1.2. A quite good fit could be
achieved even for the first three afterbounces, except for the strong collapse where
data are missing.
60
50
bubble radius [µm]
40
30
20
10
0
0 10 20 30 40 50
time [µs]
Figure 8. Comparison of the experimental single bubble oscillation (open circles) as shown
in Fig. 7 with numerical simulations based on the Gilmore model (solid line).
3 Single light-induced bubbles
The single bubbles in an acoustic trap must adjust to special conditions to be trapped.
Thus their size goes with the driving frequency, being larger for lower frequency, and
the gas content of the liquid should be low for best stability of the oscillation. Also,
in the course of oscillation the bubble contents alters in adjustment to the outer and
self-produced conditions via diffusion of mass and heat and via chemical reactions
triggered by high temperatures in the inside during collapse [17,18].
A larger variety of single bubbles can be produced by concentrating light energy in
the focus of a laser beam forcing dielectric breakdown of the liquid with concomitant
bubble formation [19]. In analogy to acoustic cavitation this bubble forming pro-
cess has been called optic cavitation. As the location of the bubble and its instant
of generation are precisely known, similarly sophisticated measurements with high-
speed optical equipment are possible on bubble oscillation, shock wave radiation and
light emission as in the case of acoustically trapped bubbles. Moreover, additional
measurements are possible on the special dynamics of bubbles near walls.
Bubble dynamics near boundaries or obstacles is outside the scope of trapped bub-
bles, as bubble stability cannot be maintained. It is, however, of strong relevance
to hydrodynamic cavitation with its erosion problem and also to ultrasonic cleaning.
Even more so, bubble interaction can be studied with light-induced bubbles by pro-
ducing two or more bubbles simultaneously at preselected places and of preselected
sizes or with a time shift between them. Some of the possibilities have already been
explored [20–24], the majority of cases, however, waits to be investigated.
Figure 9. Dynamics of a laser-produced spherical bubble in silicone oil of viscosity 4.85

poise observed at 75 000 frames per second. Maximum bubble radius is about 2 mm.
3.1 Laser-bubble dynamics

The following figures present some examples of single bubble dynamics under vari-
ous circumstances. Figure 9 shows the free oscillations of a single spherical bubble
produced in silicone oil attaining a maximum bubble radius of about 2 mm, substan-
tially larger than the few 10 µm of acoustically trapped bubbles. The oscillation is
damped by the viscosity of the liquid and the bubble attains its equilibrium radius
after about four oscillations. The bright spot in the middle of the bubble is a result
of the backlight. In a nicely spherical bubble of this size the light traverses the bub-
ble undeflected and nearly undeflected along and near perpendicular incidence of the
illuminating light on the bubble surface.
Figure 10 shows the collapse of a single bubble near a solid wall. The sequence taken
at 300 000 frames per second starts near the first collapse and shows the characteristic
protrusion of the bubble wall towards the surface. The liquid jet is hidden inside this
protrusion and is best visible in the rebound phase as a dark line inside the bright
spot at the center of the cavity where the backlight can pass undisturbed through
the smooth bubble surface. After some time the long tube of gas and vapour with
the jet inside gets unstable and decays into several tiny bubbles. The surface of the
bubble thereby reapproaches its spherical shape.
The formation and strength of a jet inside the bubble depends on the distance s
of the bubble center from the wall. To be more exact, the normalized distance or
stand-off parameter
s
γ= ,
Rmax
Figure 10. Dynamics of a laser-produced spherical bubble in water of reduced surface

tension in the neighbourhood of a plane solid boundary observed at 300000 frames per
second. Size of the frames is 6.7 mm × 2.7 mm.
where Rmax ist the maximum radius of the bubble and s the distance from the wall
at that instant, has turned out to be a good measure of perturbation of the bubble
collapse by a neighbouring wall.
The development of a jet by involution of the part of the bubble opposite to the
solid wall, the formation of a toroidal bubble or bubble vortex ring, and the rebound
of the torus bubble with the formation of a ‘counterjet’ is exemplified by Fig. 11. The
photographic series is taken at one million frames per second for better resolving the
dynamics and at an angle of 45◦ from above the wall with front illumination. The
normalized distance to the wall has the quite large value of γ =2.6. The jet is broad
and after penetrating the opposite bubble wall turns the bubble into a short living
torus bubble or vortex ring, the life time being less than a microsecond. Also within
less than a microsecond the torus bubble has rebounded and is expanding whereby a
‘counterjet’ develops sticking out upwards perpendicular to the torus ring and with
obviously little physical connection to the expanding torus bubble. It is produced
by the tension part of the torus shock wave developing upon collapse of the torus as
secondary cavitation [23]. It consists of many tiny bubbles that nucleate in the strong
negative pressure region along the perpendicular to the torus ring by confluence of the
shock/tension waves emanating from the torus ring. Figure 12 shows the evolution
of this secondary cavitation appearing on top of the bubble (torus) photographed in
side view for a bubble of Rmax = 1.5 mm and γ = 1.4.
When femtosecond laser pulses are used for bubble generation the high intensity
in the laser beam alters the properties of the medium in which it propagates, in
particular its index of refraction. In water this leads to self-focussing of the beam and
self-guiding or channelling. This effect may be used to produce elongated bubbles for
Figure 11. Bubble collapse as photographed from an angle of 45◦ from above the solid
wall with front illumination. Maximum bubble size is Rmax =1.5 mm, normalized bubble
distance γ is 2.6, the frame size is 1.1 mm (height) by 1.2 mm (width) (from Ref. [23]).
Figure 12. Evolution of the secondary cavitation event (‘counterjet’) for a bubble of
Rmax = 1.5 mm and γ = 1.4. Four frames taken at 5, 50, 100 and 200 µs after collapse are
shown. Frame size is 1.21 mm by 0.77 mm (from Ref. [23]).
Figure 13. Shape dynamics of an elongated femtosecond-laser-induced bubble. Interframe

time 400 ns; laser energy 0.8 µJ per pulse.
studying their dynamics. Figure 13 gives an example of an initially stretched bubble

of about 100 µm length generated by a femtosecond laser pulse of 0.8 µJ energy.
The photographic series depicts the typical scenario. The length of the bubble does
not increase, instead the bubble heads for a more spherical shape. The elongated
ends, however, involute early in the dynamics leading to a quadratic, after rebound
a starlike and later flat appearance unless the oscillation settles to a near spherical
shape, all in about 12 µs only.
In Fig. 14 the dynamics of an elongated bubble as produced by a femtosecond
light pulse is compared with numerical calculations done with the boundary integral
method [25]. The flattening and involution of the bubble surface from both ends, as
expected from the experiments, is reproduced in the calculations. Although a perfect
fit cannot be expected as the initial conditions cannot be specified to high accuracy,
the overall agreement in the dynamics is remarkable.
3.2 Laser-bubble shock waves

Light-induced bubbles come with a shock wave upon generation as the material of the
fluid is strongly heated and develops a large pressure that is radiated into the liquid.
The bubble expansion follows on a slower time scale. When the bubble collapses an
intense shock wave is radiated in a kind of inverse process where the bubble contents
are again compressed strongly, simultaneously with the surrounding liquid near the
surface of the bubble. This again leads to the emission of a shock wave. Also the
subsequent collapses of the bubble emit shock waves, when the viscous damping of the
liquid is low, as for water. These shock waves can be measured with sufficiently fast
hydrophones (Fig. 15). A glass fibre is brought near to the breakdown and collapse
point to capture the shock waves via the change of the reflection properties of light at
the end of the fibre by the density alteration of the liquid upon compression going with
Figure 14. Shape dynamics of two elongated femtosecond-laser-induced bubbles. The

height of the frames is 47 µm. Comparison with theory courtesy of N. Pelekasis and K.
Tsiglifis [25].
the shock wave. Figure 16 gives the result of a shock wave pressure measurement
series with different bubble sizes Rmax . The upper and lower boundaries of the shaded
area give the error bounds of the measurements. The pressures obtained at distance
d from the breakdown site have been extrapolated to the minimum bubble radius
by using a 1/r-dependence for the amplitude, where the minimum radius has been
obtained by a numerical fit to the bubble collapse. About 10 kbar are reached for a
bubble collapsing from a radius of 500 µm and about 25 kbar when collapsing from a
radius of 3 mm. Unfortunately the collapse pressure from trapped bubbles cannot be
measured this way as these bubbles are extremely sensitive to a disturbance nearby
and also of lower shock wave strength, because they reach a lower maximum size
of less than about a 100 µm and thus have less total energy. But extrapolating the
pressure values down to smaller radii Rmax gives strong evidence of collapse pressures
in the range of a few 1000 bar for standard sonoluminescing trapped bubbles.
glass fibre
laser pulse Fibre−optic hydrophone

d
Rmax
Figure 15. Experimental arrangement with a fibre-optic hydrophone for the measurement
of shock waves from laser-induced breakdown and of bubble collapse shock waves. The
distance d between the fibre tip and the bubble can be varied.
30
Figure 16. Collapse pressure at

20 minimum bubble radius from a
laser-induced bubble versus max-
Pkoll [kbar]
imum attained radius. The col-

lapse pressures are extrapolated
10 from pressure-distance measure-
ments taken at the correspond-
ing maximum bubble radii, Rmax .
The shaded region depicts the er-
0 ror margins of the extrapolation.
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
Rmax [mm]
3.3 Laser-bubble erosion

It is long known that cavitation bubbles can damage solid surfaces. Mainly two
characteristic effects are believed to be responsible for the destructive action of cav-
itation bubbles: the emission of shock waves upon collapse of the bubble and the
generation of a high-speed liquid jet directed towards the solid boundary. The main
results obtained so far are the following [22]. Damage is observed when the bubble
is generated at a distance less than twice its maximum radius from a solid boundary
(γ ≤ 2). The impact of the jet contributes to the damage only at small normalized
distances (γ ≤ 0.7). The largest erosive force is caused by the collapse of a bubble in
direct contact with the boundary, where pressures of up to several GPa act on the
material surface. Bubbles in the ranges γ ≤ 0.3 and γ = 1.2 to 1.4 cause the largest
damage.
Figure 17 gives an example from the numerous measurements done. It shows
the collapse of a bubble immediately touching the surface (γ =0.5) with high time
Figure 17. First collapse of a laser-induced bubble near a solid wall with γ = 0.5 taken
at one million frames per second. The maximum radius of the bubble was 1.45 mm. Upper
sequence: side view; lower sequence: bottom view trough the transparent solid wall. Both
views together demonstrate the transformation of the spherical bubble into a toroidal bubble
after the jet has formed.
Figure 18. Damage on an alu-

minium surface generated by 100
laser-induced bubbles. The max-
imum radius of the bubbles was
2.00 mm, the stand-off parameter,
γ = 1.4, the frame width, 2.8 mm.
resolution of one million frames per second. Both side and bottom view through the
transparent solid wall are presented. The jet through the bubble has already touched
the surface (inner bright spherical disk) leaving a toroidal bubble that spreads in size
on the surface. The torus bubble ring collapses with the emission of many distinct
shock waves. This indicates that the torus gets unstable upon collapse leading to
several collapse sites around the torus. The shock waves seem to have been emitted
directly from the surface of the wall.
The collapses along the torus bubble lead to distinct erosion pits on the solid
surface. This is demonstrated in Fig. 18, where 100 laser-induced bubbles of the same
size of Rmax =2 mm were applied at the same location with a stand-off parameter of
γ =1.4. The remarkable result is that, although the bubble at maximum elongation
does not touch the surface and a strong jet is produced upon first collapse (as known
from corresponding experiments) the damage accumulates along a ring, the location
of the torus bubble to which the spherical bubble transmutes during its collapse and
rebound.
3.4 Laser-bubble luminescence

Strongly collapsing bubbles emit light in short pulses at maximum compression.
This is not only true for acoustically excited bubbles in sonoluminescence, but also
for laser-generated or shock-excited bubbles. Therefore, the phenomenon may ap-
propriately be called cavitation luminescence. With single laser-induced bubbles the
luminescence can be studied in various situations, and its dependence on bubble size,
external pressure and bubble sphericity, for instance, can be investigated. Further-
more, specific differences between single- and multi-bubble sonoluminescence can be
studied with optically produced few-bubble configurations.
10
Pulse width (ns)

6
0
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5
Maximum bubble radius (mm)
Figure 19. Pulse width of the light emission upon collapse of a laser-induced bubble versus
the maximum attained radius.
Figure 19 shows the luminescence pulse width of laser-generated, freely collaps-

ing bubbles in dependence on the maximum bubble radius from where the collapse
starts. The pulse width increases linearly with bubble size and is quite long for
millimetre-sized bubbles (in the nanosecond range, and thus accessible to high-speed
photodetectors) as compared to the small trapped bubbles collapsing from maxi-
mum sizes of about 100 µm. The little box near the origin indicates the pulse widths
measured for small trapped bubbles [16].
Current theories of single-bubble sonoluminescence attribute the light emission to
a strong heating of the bubble medium by converging compression or shock waves
launched within the bubble shortly before the collapse is stalled [17]. The energy
concentration by this mechanism should therefore depend critically on the degree of
sphericity imparted to these waves. Experimental evidence for this relation is given
by Fig. 20 which shows how the light diminishes with increasing perturbation of
the bubble collapse [26]. The asphericity acquired during collapse is controlled by a
plane solid surface whose distance to the breakdown site is altered. A bubble far
from the boundary collapses spherically (large γ), a bubble nearer to the boundary
collapses the more aspherically the nearer it is to the boundary. An astounding result
was found, namely that the light emission ceases at the quite large value of γ = 4.
This means that the bubble must retain a sufficiently round shape upon collapse in
order to produce luminescence light. Further experimental results corroborating this
hypothesis are reported in the next section.
4 Laser-induced bubbles in a sound field
In order to keep a bubble stably oscillating in an acoustic bubble trap special con-
ditions have to be met. The bubble’s free radial motion may not be disturbed, so it
has to be kept well away from boundaries and other bubbles. The net average force
0.5
0.4
Normalized Energy
0.3
Figure 20. Luminescence
of laser-induced bubbles col-
0.2 lapsing asymmetrically near
a solid wall. Dependence of
the light energy normalized
0.1 to the light emitted from
a spherical bubble on the
0.0 stand-off parameter γ.
0 2 4 6 8 10
γ
due to pressure gradients in the liquid must vanish not to induce bubble translation.
Also, streaming of the liquid must be avoided for the same reason. The amplitude
of the sound field is constrained to a small interval where the bubble is in a stable
diffusive equilibrium, in accord with the liquid’s gas content. The bubble collects a
certain amount of noble gas and has a rest radius of a few micrometres, typically.
Thus by means of stable bubble trapping a limited range of the bubble’s parameter
space is available for exploration. The advantage of the method is that the bubble
can be scrutinized easily, e. g. by high-speed photography, because it stays at a fixed
location and can oscillate clock-like for many hours.
By means of optic cavitation steady and transient bubble dynamics in a sound
field can be explored in a much larger parameter space than available with bubble
trapping, while the advantage of being able to image the bubble dynamics at least
for a limited amount of time is preserved. Furthermore, bubble translation and
the acoustic and hydrodynamic forces on a bubble, e. g. drag forces, as well as the
interaction of two or more bubbles can be studied in a well-defined setting. Thus the
combination of optic generation and acoustic driving represents an ideal laboratory
to study many aspects of single bubble behaviour and also to control bubble motion
by carefully chosen parameter changes – an aspect that up to now has not been
pursued extensively in experiments.
Fig. 21 shows the basic experimental setup for optic cavitation in a sound field.
As described previously the bubble is generated by focussing a (nanosecond to fem-
tosecond) laser pulse in the liquid. Simultaneously an ultrasonic field is applied in
the cuvette at one of its main resonance frequencies, preferably the (1,1,1) mode, to
achieve high sound pressures. An essential experimental feat is that the laser pulse
can be applied at a well defined phase of the acoustic field which yields reproducible
initial conditions for the ensuing bubble dynamics. For that purpose electronic de-
vices were built that synchronize the laser operation with the acoustic field.
One issue of central importance in bubble physics is the question of how large a
degree of energy focussing can be achieved in the violent collapse of a cavitation bub-
xenon flash lamp
laser pulse water−filled

130 fs insonated blocking filter
cuvette mirror diverter
11
00 11
00
00
11 0
1
Figure 21. Experimental
mirror11
00
00
11 01
10
0
1 setup for studying the dy-
namics of laser-generated
long distance cooled
microscope PMT bubbles in an ultrasonic
field.
CCD camera
ble. Even at the rather moderate acoustic driving pressures (∼1.2 to 1.4 bar) used in
stable single bubble sonoluminescence experiments a high degree of energy focussing
is obtained, leading to temperatures at the bubble center in excess of 10000 K. By
employing optic cavitation in a sound field, much higher acoustic pressures up to the
cavitation threshold in the liquid can be utilized for driving the bubble.
Then, under suitable conditions, the bubble’s energy available for collapse is mainly
supplied by the sound field and not by the laser pulse, and is only limited by the
maximum radius the bubble can grow to in the negative-pressure phase of the acous-
tic oscillation without getting unstable. As an example, in Fig. 22 the dynamics of
a femtosecond-laser-generated bubble in water without acoustic excitation (top left)
is compared with the case where a bubble generated with the same laser pulse pa-
rameters is exposed to a sound field of moderate amplitude (pa =159 kPa, right).
Figure 22. Top: fs-laser-generated

bubble in water without sound field.
Frame separation: 200 ns, collapse
time ≈ 2.2 µs, maximum bubble size
≈ 30 µm×55 µm. The bubble is elon-
gated due to self-focussing of the laser
pulse. Right: bubble generated at
the same conditions in a sound field
of pa ≈ 159 kPa and fa ≈ 44 kHz.
Frame separation: 800 ns. Maximum
bubble diameter ≈ 100 µm, collapse
time ≈ 15 µs.
50
100
seeding phase [deg]
radius [10 µm]

150
200
250
300
350
0 5 10 15 20
time [µs]
Figure 23. Numerical simulation of the transient dynamics of a laser generated bubble as
a function of seeding phase and time. The bubble radius has been calculated by the Gilmore
model and is shown colour-coded, the initial conditions and sound field parameters are taken
from the experiment as described in the text. For the phase interval where luminescence
of transient bubbles can be observed in the experiment this calculation gives a peak radius
that is larger than that of the steady oscillation.
Because of the small laser pulse energy used in this experiment the non-driven bub-
ble remains small and collapses shortly after its inception. Due to nonlinear optical
effects it attains a cylindrical shape (see Sect. 3.1). Such a bubble does not emit any
detectable luminescence light. The driven bubble is generated at the beginning of
the negative-pressure phase. In the presence of sound the bubble grows significantly
larger and becomes more spherical. The maximum radius that can be obtained for a
given driving level depends, of course, on the instant of bubble inception relative to
the pressure cycle, the seeding phase ϕs 1 . Figure 23 shows a numerical simulation of
the first transient oscillation cycle of a laser-generated bubble as a function of seed-
ing phase based on the Gilmore model. The bubble’s initial conditions have been
taken from the corresponding experiment and are the same for all phase values [27].
Around ϕs ≈ 220◦ the simulation yields a particularly large maximum radius as the
bubble is optimally expanded by the sound field and the laser pulse energy is utilized
as well.
For seeding phases of ϕs < 180 the bubble behaviour is different. Because of
the overpressure now acting on the bubble just generated, it collapses quickly and
stays small until the sound field creates tension to expand it again. For ϕ → 0
1
The seeding phase is defined to be zero at the beginning of the positive-pressure phase
of the sound field.
Figure 24. Experimentally measured times of first collapse of the optically generated
bubble (circles) and numerically fitted curve obtained with the Gilmore model. The fit
yields the phase calibration and the acoustic amplitude that cannot be measured by a
hydrophone in situ without significantly disturbing the sound field.
a large maximum radius is attained later and later in the acoustic cycle (Fig. 23).
This leads to a discontinuity in collapse times vs. seeding phase as shown in Fig. 24.
Experimental values are plotted along with numerical data obtained with the Gilmore
model for parameters that are fitted to yield minimum deviation. By comparing
experimental data with numerical results from a proven model the bubble can be
used as a pressure sensor in a self-consistent way: the fit yields the zero of the
seeding phase and the amplitude of the acoustic pressure at the bubble position.
The jump in collapse time corresponds to the point where the sound field is able to
reverse the bubble motion before the first, immediate collapse occurs. This method
of pressure determination has the advantage that no hydrophone, which invariably
tends to disturb the sound field, has to be immersed in the liquid, and that it can
also be used with a closed cuvette.
Femtosecond laser pulses have been used for bubble generation in these experi-
ments to reduce the amount of non-condensable gas that is created in the breakdown
process. Femtosecond pulses have a low breakdown threshold and thus a small plasma
volume, so the gas production is minimized. Less gas means a more violent collapse as
the bubble can shrink to a smaller volume before the pressure in the bubble medium
counteracts the inertially dominated liquid inflow. In this way a high energy concen-
tration and collapse strength may be achieved, that can be assessed by measuring
bubble luminescence and shock wave emission as its indicators, and their dependence
on acoustic driving pressure, for example.
Figure 25 presents an investigation of bubble luminescence for optically generated
bubbles in an ultrasonic field. Light emission of the bubbles in dependence on their
seeding phase ϕs was measured for bubbles of the type shown in Fig. 22(right). While,
(a) (c)
(b)
Figure 25. Luminescence light output

(top) and longitudinal- and transverse-
section pseudo-streak images (bottom)
of femtosecond-laser-generated bubbles
(44 kHz, 159 kPa) as a function of seed-
ing phase ϕs . (a) At ϕs =184◦ lumi-
nescence appears but is still weak, (b)
at ϕs =192◦ it reaches a maximum and
(c) at ϕs =201◦ diminishes again. Note
that luminescence data and each verti-
cal slice of the streak images have been
obtained from different bubbles gener-
ated at the same conditions. For details,
see Ref. [27].
as mentioned before, the non-driven bubbles do not emit light, weak luminescence of
the driven bubbles could be detected in two small intervals of the seeding phase. The
first interval around ϕs = 192◦ is shown in the figure and nearly coincides with the
region of maximum bubble expansion seen in Fig. 23. Closer analysis of the bubble
shape reveals that light emission in this regime appears to depend sensitively on the
roundness of the bubble immediately before collapse. The same is true for the second
phase interval around ϕ =331◦ where light emission is observed upon the delayed,
strong collapse (Fig. 26).
Figure 26. Dynamics and lumi-

nescence of bubbles generated at
the seeding phase ϕs =331◦ . The
measurements are presented as in
Fig. 25. Here, the bubbles are shot
in the positive-pressure phase of
the sound field and collapse imme-
diately. Upon the second, strong
collapse light is emitted.
Nearly perfectly round bubbles can be obtained when laser-breakdown is initiated

in the positive sound pressure phase, so that the generated bubble remains initially
small and is finally expanded in the subsequent half cycle. The laser energy is largely
dissipated, and so are the initial pressure and flow anisotropies induced by the elon-
gated shape of the laser plasma.
This method for bubble inception has been used to study bubble luminescence as
a function of acoustic driving pressure. One result is shown in Fig. 27. It presents
the luminescence pulse energy (in terms of photomultiplier voltage) vs. acoustic
pressure. Measurements were restricted to the first oscillation cycle after bubble
generation because, at large driving pressures, the bubbles tend to disintegrate after
the collapse and are thus not well defined anymore. The figure shows that with
increasing pressure the probability to observe luminescence for a certain laser shot
tends toward 100%, and that the average luminescence pulse energy increases as well.
It can be concluded that, in fact, by increasing the driving amplitude the bubble
collapse becomes more energetic. Above pa ≈ 4 bar, which is near the cavitation
threshold in the cuvette, the light yield does not increase anymore. The reason for
this behaviour remains to be clarified. It may be caused by a shape instability of the
bubble, and by the fact that for a fixed frequency of the driving field the bubble can
only be expanded to a certain maximum size within one half-cycle of the oscillation.
To observe a larger number of oscillation cycles of laser-generated bubbles in a
sound field the acoustic amplitude must be chosen in a way not to excite surface
oscillations. This is the case for sound levels around 1.2 bar as used in SBSL experi-
ments. In fact, if the gas content of the liquid is also adjusted correctly, the transition
of a laser-generated bubble towards a single stably oscillating, light-emitting bubble
can be studied. Figure 28 presents but one example of measurements performed on
this phenomenon. Here, the light emission is recorded by means of a sensitive, gatable
ICCD camera. The camera was opened for 2.28 ms (corresponding to 100 oscillation
Figure 27. Intensity (∗, blue colour) and relative probability (◦, red colour) of luminescence
events at first collapse of a fs-laser-generated bubble in a sound field vs. the acoustic driving
pressure. With increasing pressure, the probablity of observing luminescence reaches nearly
100%, while the average energy of the actually observed luminescence events increases up
to a sound pressure of about 4 bar, where it appears to level off. All the bubbles were shot
in the positive pressure phase of the sound field (measurements by T. Wilken).
cycles) to accumulate photons emitted by the bubble at various time delays after the
laser shot. The bubble must be generated at the exact pressure antinode of the sound
field to keep it stationary for the time of the measurement (up to several seconds).
The figure reveals a steady increase in the emitted number of photons with time on a
scale of several seconds. Slow chemical and diffusive processes are presumably taking
place during the transition from the initial state to the final SBSL state. The figure
also shows that the bubble, at certain times in this process, becomes positionally
unstable and performs a translatory or dancing motion. This effect is usually at-
tributed to diffusive instability associated with the shedding of microbubbles. Here,
this type of behaviour is observed at a constant driving pressure below the threshold
of diffusion instability and could indicate a chemically-induced mass transport.
5 Inside the bubble – Molecular dynamics calculations
During the final stages of collapse the medium within the bubble can become highly
compressed and heated, a visible sign of this state being cavitation luminescence.
During a time on the order of nanoseconds the liquid inflow is arrested and reversed,
and though most models of the radial bubble dynamics consider the bubble medium
as an adiabatically and homogeneously compressed ideal or real gas, this is pre-
sumably not the true story. To understand cavitation luminescence, and also, for
example, bubble chemistry one has to know what is going on inside the bubble.
Figure 28. Images of bubble luminescence taken by a gated ICCD camera. Each pixel
value represents an average over 5 recordings, the exposure time per recording being 2.28
ms corresponding to 100 oscillation cycles. Bubbles were shot by a femtosecond laser in a
sound field (fa = 44 kHz) at conditions where stable SBSL is possible (partially degassed
water, sound amplitude around 1.3 bar). The times after laser breakdown are given for each
frame. The results clearly demonstrate how the laser-generated bubbles slowly turn into
a stable SBSL bubble. This process is accompanied by a steady increase of the cavitation
luminescence up to full SBSL intensity (measurements by T. Wilken).
At present we are not able to look into the interior of bubbles at collapse to measure
pressures and temperatures there, notably at the center. However, numerical inves-
tigations can be done to get an impression of the phenomena to expect and to couple
them to the observed outside effects. One speculation that has been around for quite
a long time [28] is that converging microshocks are launched in a bubble collapsing
at supersonic speed, which are held responsible for the extreme heating. After the
discovery of SBSL these ideas have been reconsidered and elaborated upon. Initial
fluid-dynamical calculations revealed astonishing peak temperatures at the bubble
center (greater than 1 million Kelvin [29]). Such results are now considered obso-
lete, and more sophisticated models [30–32] have yielded an interior dynamics that
features inward-travelling compression waves, mixture segregation, vapour trapping,
chemical reactions and entropy effects, a part of which may actually prevent the
formation of focussing shock waves and limit the peak temperatures.
Notwithstanding theses successes the numerical modelling of the bubble medium
remains a formidable problem. A host of physical and chemical mechnisms have to
be taken into account, while the bubble medium undergoes extreme changes of its
thermodynamic state. The equation of state, chemical reactions and transport phe-
nomena within the medium and across the phase boundary (heat and mass diffusion,
phase change) have to be captured. It is clear that detailed models become compli-
cated and difficult to solve, much more difficult to validate. Concerning the question
of shock formation, continuous hydrodynamic solvers have to be used that are able to
handle the shock discontinuity. This may become problematic for converging shocks
whose real thickness near the origin approaches the size of the region to be modelled.
To circumvent this problem, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of the bubble
medium have been proposed [33,34] as an alternative numerical approach. In fact,
micrometer-sized bubbles contain relatively few (i. e., on the order of 1010 ) particles.
With suitable coarse-graining, the number of particles (pseudo-molecules) that can
be expected to give a faithful representation of reality can be reduced to about one
million, a number that is tractable by present-day computers.
In our MD model the gas and vapour molecules are treated as hard spheres that
bounce around in the bubble. The hard-sphere system can be advanced in time
very efficiently by an event-driven algorithm [35]. The bubble wall is prescribed as
a spherical container whose radial dynamics is governed by a Rayleigh–Plesset-type
differential equation. It is coupled to the MD model by the pressure exerted on the
wall by particle impacts. The physics at the phase boundary is implemented by an
appropriate set of wall collision rules [34].
The MD approach naturally includes linear and nonlinear diffusive processes as
heat conduction or molecular species diffusion. Chemical reactions can be modelled
relatively easily by introducing different particle species and modifying collision rules
to reflect possible chemical reactions. Being inherently three-dimensional the general
case of aspheric collapse can be simulated without redesign of the algorithm when
the bubble wall dynamics is known or can be calculated.
Figure 29(top) depicts the temperature in the interior of a typical sonoluminescing
bubble of radius Rn = 4.5µm driven at 26.5 kHz and 130 kPa as obtained with a
MD simulation with 107 particles. The bubble contains argon and water vapour.
Water dissociation and corresponding chemical reactions have been included in the
Figure 29. Colour-coded plots of the spatio-temporal evolution of the temperature (top)
and the OH density (bottom) in the interior of a collapsing sonoluminescing bubble. Rest
radius Rn = 4.5µm; sound frequency 26.5 kHz; sound pressure amplitude 130 kPa, water
temperature 300 K, accomodation coefficient for water vapour αv = 0.1. Ten million parti-
cles have been used in the simulation.
calculations. The white line marks the bubble wall. The center temperature reaches
about 16 000 K upon collapse where the bubble attains a minimum value of about
0.8 µm. This is in the range of values reported for sonoluminescing bubbles derived
from optical spectra of the light emitted. It is seen that the temperature distribution
is very inhomogeneous. The density in the bubble turns out to come close to or even
exceed that of liquid water.
Figure 29(bottom) presents an example for the capability of the MD method to in-
vestigate bubble chemistry. For the same bubble as before the density of OH radicals
is plotted in dependence on space and time. The hydroxyl radical is an important
chemical species in sonochemistry that can dissolve in the water and mediate further
reactions there. The OH distribution closely matches the temperature field. Obvi-
ously it is also produced in an outgoing compression wave heading toward the bubble
wall. As the temperature drops the OH is quickly consumed again by chemical re-
actions. Furthermore, in this spherically symmetric collapse the OH concentration
remains small in the cold gas-vapour layer near the bubble wall. This means that
OH uptake by the liquid should be small as well. It is difficult to accurately predict
the amount of OH going into the liquid because the uptake coefficients are not (or
not well) known.
The production of OH is closely correlated with the distribution of water vapour
in the bubble. It has been shown that in the late collapse phase the water vapour
cannot diffuse out of the bubble any more and remains trapped [32,36]. Also, in
the presence of non-condensable gas, e. g. noble gases, demixing occurs so that the
lighter and hotter molecules accumulate at the center of the bubble. MD simulations
confirm this effect and also yield measurable effects in bubble chemistry caused by
the redistribution of water vapour.
When fewer particles are used in a molecular dynamics calculation the bubble
dynamics can be followed over several oscillation cycles with acceptable computation
time. Even with as few as 50 000–100 000 particles the radial dynamics obtained
closely matches results obtained with conventional ODE bubble models (Fig. 30).
The advantage is that the MD calculation also provides information on the vapour
content and the evolution of chemical species in the bubble over this long time.
50
40
30
r[µm]
Figure 30. Radius vs. time

20 curve for an SBSL bubble
with the same parameters as
10 in Fig. 29. The MD simu-
lation was run with 110 000
0
particles.
0 20 40 60 80
t[µs]
100 3
80
2
60
PA,eff [bar]
R [µ m]
40
1
20
0 0
−1
0 5 10 15 20 25
t [µ s]
Figure 31. Radius vs. time curve of a laser-generated bubble in an acoustic field of fre-
quency 44 kHz and amplitude 159 kPa. The seeding phase of the bubble is ϕs = 184◦ . The
MD simulation was run with 64 000 particles. The simulation corresponds to the measure-
ment presented in Fig. 25(a).
Of course, the MD method is not restricted to the study of single, sonoluminescing

bubbles. The method has also been applied to simulate the interior dynamics of
laser-generated bubbles. A particular challenge, and a field for further exploration,
is the definition of correct initial conditions to describe an expanding, hot bubble
immediately after laser breakdown. In the calculation presented in Fig. 31 for a
laser bubble in a sound field, initial conditions were chosen that are believed to be
reasonable and consistent with experimental observations of the laser plasma and
emerging bubble: the initial radius of 1.5 µm corresponds to the extension of the
laser plasma, and the initial temperature was taken as T0 =3000 K with one third of
the water molecules being dissociated. The results on this figure correspond to the
experimentally investigated bubbles shown in Fig. 25(a). Even a casual inspection
with the naked eye shows that the simulation captures the essential features of the
radial dynamics observed in the experiment.
6 Conclusion
The single bubble in a liquid is a conceptually simple two-phase system that neverthe-
less is difficult to tackle in reality. A multitude of physical and chemical effects occur
simultaneously and interact while the bubble undergoes possibly extreme changes in
its thermodynamic state, in particular at collapse. Instabilities of position and shape
can make it difficult to observe single bubbles experimentally. As we hope to have
shown experiments have profited, in this respect, from the method of optic cavitation
and the discovery of stable single bubble trapping.
In real-world situations and applications, such as ultrasonic cleaning and chemical
processing, bubbles usually appear in clouds and experience strong interaction with
each other and with their environment, as clearly demonstrated by a host of self-
organization effects [37]. In these settings the bubbles usually have a limited lifetime
and undergo changes of size and composition. Nevertheless, they can often be viewed
as the elementary particles in problems of bubble cloud dynamics and structure for-
mation. Single bubble studies as presented here have clarified many basic properties
of these objects, and will do so in the future. Still, a lot remains to be learned about
single bubbles, in particular, at the nano-scale.
Acknowledgements. The authors thank all current and former members of the Nonlinear
Dynamics and Cavitation group at the Dritte Physikalische Institut (DPI) for uncountable
input to the work described here, in particular, R. Mettin and U. Parlitz for steady support
and scientific exchange, and P. Koch, O. Lindau, C. D. Ohl, and A. Phillipp who contributed
to this work. Thanks also go to the wonderful DPI as a whole forming the basis and home
where results like those reported here easily could grow.
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From a single bubble to bubble structures

in acoustic cavitation
Robert Mettin
Abstract. The article reviews main ingredients for a bottom-up approach to understand
and model acoustic cavitation structures. Based upon the dynamics of a single, spheri-
cal bubble in a sound field, the fate of a bubble in a given acoustic set-up and collective
behaviour in multibubble systems are derived. The discussion includes nucleation and os-
cillation of bubbles, their shape stability, and rectified gas diffusion. Furthermore, acoustic
forces on pulsating bubbles and bubble translation are addressed. The different aspects are
combined in bubble life cycle diagrams, and a particle model for the description of many
interacting bubbles is proposed. The application of this method for numerical simulation of
experimentally observed acoustic cavitation structures is demonstrated by examples.
1 Introduction
The expression acoustic cavitation describes the physical phenomenon of rupture of

a liquid under tension caused by a sound wave [1–6]. Apart from the creation of
voids in the liquid itself, which is termed inception, acoustic cavitation comprises as
well the further destiny of the voids. This leads directly to the main subjects bubble
dynamics, bubble collapse, and bubble structure formation. An important issue is
also the transformation of the non-cavitating liquid into a two-phase fluid of gas and
liquid after cavitation inception. Among other effects, this can cause a retroaction of
cavitation on the generating sound field.
All the above items, taken alone, are already challenging research topics and not
understood in every detail yet. Taken all together, we can rightly characterize acous-
tically cavitating liquids as complex systems. Complicating aspects for a general
theoretical treatment of acoustic cavitation and the accompanying phenomena are
especially nonlinearity, time and space scales that span many orders of magnitude,
and granularity (i. e., properties somehow intermediate between continuous and dis-
crete). Accordingly, investigations in this area often attack partial problems and
idealized cases to reach a better and better understanding and description of the
observations, though still being far from a general and complete picture.
In recent time, the demand for an improved knowledge of acoustic cavitation has
grown constantly, because the field of applications is permanently extending. Be-
172 R. Mettin
(a) (b)
Figure 1. Bubbles in tap water below a sonotrode tip (5 mm diameter, 20 kHz) with
background illumination: exposure time in (a) 1 ms, in (b) 1 µs.
sides rather established usage in ultrasonic cleaning and ultrasonically assisted chem-
istry, relatively new and even exotic applications gain attention. These range from
nanoparticle production and sewage sludge activation via biomedical applications
like contrast imaging and cancer treatment up to the prospect of table-top nuclear
fusion reactions. In parallel with the increased interest, research methods and tech-
nical equipment have improved likewise in recent years. This is true in particular for
high-speed imaging systems and computer power. Consequently, research activity is
very active and growing, and new insights are obtained rapidly.
The aim of this article is to focus on the destiny of individual bubbles in acoustic
cavitation. The acoustic field causes a permanent driving of the once created cavity,
and this leads to peculiar effects that prolongate and complicate the life of a bub-
ble. One important microscopic aspect is the bubble collapse [7]. On a meso- and
macroscopic scale, it is important that the bubbles often translate quite fast due to
acoustic forces.1 Additionally, they can shrink or grow by gas diffusion processes,
merge with other bubbles, or split into smaller ones, and these processes are also
strongly influenced by the acoustic field.
In typical set-ups of cavitation applications, an acoustic field is created by an ul-
trasonic transducer. Here, one can roughly distinguish between localized sources,
like the tip of an ultrasonic horn, and plane emitters of larger size (compared to
the acoustic wavelength). In any case, cavitation manifests itself to the unaided ob-
server as “clouds” or “bubbly zones” of various shapes and extensions. Of course, the
cavitating region consists of many individual, often well separated and surprisingly
spherical bubbles. This is even true at rather high bubble densities, as is demon-
1
This might be seen in contrast to hydrodynamic cavitation, where the liquid ruptures
under a hydrodynamic flow condition which induces negative pressures. Then, cavities are
typically attached to a body surface, or are convected by the flow to normal pressure zones,
and disappear. Therefore, the life of a hydrodynamic cavitation bubble is usually quite
different, and its location is determined by the body and/or the liquid flow.
Acoustic cavitation 173
strated in Fig. 1 by two photographs of long and short exposure time, respectively.
This clearly motivates the description of the cavitating zone via many single bubbles
and their respective behavior. For the consideration of spatial bubble distributions,
we can treat them as individual point-like particles: each bubble has a well defined
position and velocity, and it is reacting to forces acting upon its centre of mass.
Following this approximation, the dynamics of the two-phase liquid transfers to a
many-body problem, in a way similar to stars moving in a galaxy, or electrons and
ions moving in a plasma.2 Indeed, notable parallels exist as compared to gravitation
or electromagnetism, but the acoustic origin of the forces and the presence of a liquid
bear also specific differences, which renders the many-body problem a rather peculiar
one.
The following Sections 2 and 3 will briefly discuss the origin of bubbles and their
oscillation dynamics under the presence of a driving sound field. The treatment is
limited to spherical bubbles, and the loss of spherical stability as well as rectified
gas diffusion are addressed. Section 4 deals with acoustic forces on the bubbles
and aspects of their translational motion like added mass and viscous drag. A brief
discussion of bubble life cycles follows in Sect. 5. The extension to a multibubble
particle model is proposed in Sect. 6, and some examples of spatial bubble structure
formations together with their numerical simulation are presented. A conlusion and
outlook is given in Sect. 7.
2 Cavitation inception and bubble nucleation
If a continuous (cw) acoustic field of gradually increased intensity is applied to a

liquid, sooner or later the cavitation inception threshold will be reached, and bubbles
are created. Because the sound is permanently irradiated into the now cavitating
liquid, generated bubbles will have a subsequent (possibly complicated) destiny, and
further new bubbles can appear all the time. Reserving the term “inception” for the
global transition from quiet to cavitating liquid, here the notion of “bubble creation”
will be preferred for the local origin of a bubble. Indeed, one can observe several
differerent ways of bubble creation in cw fields. Some bubbles appear suddenly “out
of nothing” in the bulk liquid, others seem to occur from an invisible continuous
source in the bulk, or from continuous sources at walls. Sometimes the source is
a larger bubble that emits smaller ones. The nature of bubble creation or source
can be very important for the spatial cavitation patterns that appear, and some are
illustrated in the following.
Figure 2 shows the process of a spontaneous nucleation near a high acoustic pres-
sure zone in bulk water. A small object suddenly appears isolated and without any
precursor in the liquid (first frame) and develops into a cluster. It travels at rel-
atively high speed towards a lower acoustic pressure region. Crum and Nordling
2
Another point of view is taken by continuous models of cavitation, where the gas void
fraction or the density of bubbles is understood as a quantity continuously varying in space
and time. Such models do not resolve individual bubbles, and they are usually formulated
by partial differential equations. A particle approach results in a set of ordinary differential
equations.
174 R. Mettin
0 ms 7 ms 14 ms
2 mm
1 ms 8 ms 15 ms
2 ms 9 ms 16 ms
3 ms 10 ms 17 ms
4 ms 11 ms 18 ms
5 ms 12 ms 19 ms
6 ms 13 ms 20 ms
Figure 2. Free nucleation into a cluster in a 20 kHz sound field (high-speed recording
with 1000 frames per second (fps), exposure time 1.5 µs). An object that appears as a germ
bubble (arrow first frame) develops into a conglomerate of bubbles that travels to the right.
The visibility of the cluster changes, because the relative phase of the sub-period exposure
time is drifting from frame to frame, and the cluster bubbles oscillate with strong volume
changes. On some frames they are close to collapse and too small to be resolved.
observed similar events [8] and termed them “comets”. Possibly they are triggered
by an advected microbubble, or ionizing particle radiation.
Another typical picture of nucleation is shown in Fig. 3. A quasi-continuous stream
of small bubbles appears out of the bulk, forming a trail of bubbles, or a “streamer”.
Bubbles travel along directional paths from the invisible source in the liquid towards
junctions with other streamers, which causes a dendritic form. The invisible sources
of bubbles remain active over many acoustic cycles. Probably, invisible sub-micron
bubbles, stabilized or from degassing processes in the liquid, migrate to the apparent
bubble source and merge to visible size, feeding the stream of bubbles.
Further sources of small bubbles are larger ones: driven by the acoustic field, they
can undergo surface instabilities. By pinch-off or even by apparent “explosions” [9]
one or many daughter bubbles can be produced. The generating bubble may be
freely floating in the liquid, or be attached to an immersed object or a wall. If fixed,
(a) 1 mm (b)
Figure 3. Nucleation from the bulk liquid into streamers in a 20 kHz sound field (two
frames from a high-speed recording, exposure time 1.5 µs). Several streamer sources on
frame (a) change into a single one on frame (b) within the interframe time of 30 ms.
it can form a spatially stable source of a continuous bubble stream. To control such
attached bubble sources can be one way of a cavitation structure control [10].
Examples of microbubble generation are shown later in Figs. 7 and 9. The process
of repetitive ejection seems to be a common cavitation bubble source if objects or
walls are contributing, and for a complete description, gas diffusion into such source
bubbles has to be taken into account. The attached bubbles might even be very
small, as recent investigations on “nano-bubbles” suggest [11].
3 Bubble dynamics
Once a bubble is created in the liquid, it will show variations of size and possibly
shape as a reaction to the sound field. On a longer time scale, translational and
diffusional processes can take place. From the point of view of a single, individual
bubble, these issues are captured by the term bubble dynamics. A very useful model
for investigation of bubble dynamics is a spherical gas and vapour bubble. Here it
is usually assumed that the gas inside the bubble is non-condensable (and thus its
mass is conserved, at least on a fast time scale), and the vapour is instantaneously
evaporating or condensing at the bubble walls, leading always to the equilibrium
vapour pressure inside.3 The presence of a non-condensable gas (in many cases air)
can be questioned, but keeping in mind the nucleation mechanism from stabilized
micro (or nano) gas bubbles, this assumption usually makes sense.4 Indeed, an
3
Refinements of this model include gas diffusion and vapour evaporation and condensa-
tion dynamics, but they lead in many parameter regimes in water to rather small corrections.
They are important for a good description of the collapse, which is not central here, and
thus they are neglected in the following.
4
Of course, also pure vapour cavitation might be encountered in some situations, like
in liquid helium [12]. However, here we are dealing mainly with water-air systems under
normal conditions.
176 R. Mettin
important quantity characterizing every bubble is the mass of non-condensable gas

inside, defining its equilibrium size. On a longer time scale, this size can change due
to diffusion (see below, Sect. 3.3).
The spherical symmetry renders the problem one-dimensional and facilitates calcu-
lations significantly. Indeed, this assumption is surprisingly good in many situations
encountered in acoustic cavitation, and mainly violated for larger bubbles and for
very close boundaries imposed by other bubbles or objects. Instability of sphericity
is also discussed below (Sect. 3.2).
Spherical gas bubble models mainly vary in the Equation Of State (EOS) for
the liquid and the gas. The simplest assumption is an incompressible liquid and
an ideal gas, resulting in an equation frequently referred to as the Rayleigh-Plesset
equation [4,5]. It can be improved by incorporation of liquid compressibility and an
advanced EOS for the gas like a Van-der-Waals model. For the problems considered
here, a sufficient compromise between computational effort and accuracy is a model
with slight (first order) compressibility of the liquid, namely the Gilmore model [13]
or the Keller-Miksis model [14]. With an ideal gas law the Keller-Miksis model reads
! ! !
Ṙ 3 2 Ṙ Ṙ pl R dpl
1− RR̈ + Ṙ 1 − = 1+ + ,
c 2 3c c ρ ρc dt
3κ
2σ R0 2σ 4µ
pl = p0 + − p0 − − Ṙ − pa (t) .
R0 R R R
Here, R is the bubble radius, c and ρ the sound speed and the density of the liquid,
µ and σ the viscosity and the surface tension, and κ the polytropic exponent. The
acoustic pressure is denoted pa (t), while the static pressure is p0 . R0 denotes the
bubble equilibrium radius, and vapour pressure is neglected.
In the following we focus on the volume oscillations, shape instabilities, and recti-
fied diffusion. Afterwards, acoustic forces are addressed which are induced by a cw
acoustic field on a gas bubble. The acoustic forces finally lead to spatial translation
and structure formation of the bubbles. For all calculations, the spherical bubble
model is used and thus it is the core of all results presented.
3.1 Bubble oscillations

A spherical gas-filled bubble under static conditions posseses an equilibrium radius
R0 (or an equilibrium volume V0 = 4πR03 /3) if the static pressure p0 is larger than
the Blake threshold pressure [4]
1/2
8σ 3σ
pB = p0 + .
9 2[p0 + (2σ/R0 )]R03
For p0 < pB the bubble would expand infinitely.5 A momentary excursion of the
bubble radius from the equilibrium results in damped oscillations around R0 , the
5
However, in practice it is normally not possible to sustain a static negative pressure
for a longer time under the condition of bubble expansion, i. e., cavitation. Thus bubble
expansion will be stopped sooner or later in real systems.
30 20
20 kHz 500 kHz
25 400 kPa
150 kPa 15
(Rmax - R0) / R0
(Rmax - R0) / R0
20
1/1
15 10 |
20/1
| 300 kPa
140 kPa
10 10/1
|
5
5 |
130 kPa 20/1 200 kPa |
|
10/1 1/1
0 0
1 2 5 10 20 0.2 0.5 1 2 5
R0 [ µm ] R0 [ µm ]
Figure 4. Bubble response at driving frequencies of 20 kHz (left) and 500 kHz (right). The
normalized maximum bubble radius during one driving period is plotted vs the equilibrium
radius for different driving pressures. If higher-periodic or chaotic solutions occur, more
than one point is visible. Certain resonances are indicated by numbers (from Ref. [17]).
restoring force being the static liquid pressure (for R > R0 ) or the gas pressure (for
R < R0 ). If the pressure oscillates around the static value, which is the case in a
sound wave, the bubble radius performs forced oscillations: the gas bubble behaves
as a driven oscillator system [5]. Small excitation allows to consider the linearized
model, which shows a resonance frequency of [15]

2 1 2σ
ωres = (2πfres )2 = 3κp0 + (3κ − 1) .
ρR02 R0
In the case of water under normal conditions, we find the approximate relation
fres R0 ≈ 3 [m/s]. For monofrequent driving at the frequency f we can accordingly
find a resonant equilibrium radius Rres ≈ 3/f [m]. The linearized pulsation of the
gas bubble is important for analytical considerations of many aspects of bubble dy-
namics and as a reference motion. It is discussed in textbooks [4–6]. However, one
has to keep in mind that it is only valid in the limit of small bubble volume changes,
and stronger excursions exhibit the nonlinear behaviour of the equation. In particu-
lar, nonlinear resonances, hysteresis, and chaotic oscillations [16] occur for suitable
parameters. This has been shown for parameters relevant for acoustic cavitation
at lower ultrasonic frequencies in Ref. [17]. From there, Fig. 4 has been taken for
illustration of the rich behaviour.
A specific and important feature of the bubble response is the “dynamic” Blake
threshold: for sufficiently small bubbles, surface tension can not be overcome by the
negative acoustic pressure and the bubbles oscillate only weakly. From a certain
equilibrium radius on (or similar, from a certain stronger tension on), the bubble
grows to a multitude of its equilibrium size and shows subsequent strong collapse
and rebound events. The transition or border between small, “quiet” and “inactive”
bubbles and the larger, strongly expanding “loud” and “active” bubbles is relatively
sharp and equivalent to the standard static Blake threshold in the limit of an acous-
178 R. Mettin
100 kPa 200 kPa
| |
Figure 5. Dynamic Blake threshold in the parameter plane of equilibrium radius R0 and
frequency f . The normalized maximum radius (Rmax − R0 )/R0 is gray coded for the two
driving pressures 100 kPa (left) and 200 kPa (right). At 200 kPa, the sharp border of the
white area constitutes the threshold (arrows).
tic frequency of zero.6 This phenomenon has been highlighted by Noltingk and
Neppiras [18,19]. In more detail it has been calculated and discussed later, for in-
stance in Refs. [17,20], and its relevance for trapped single bubbles and single bubble
sonoluminescence (SBSL) has been realized in Refs. [21,22]. Figure 5 from Ref. [20]
illustrates the sudden jump in parameter space of equilibrium radius and acoustic fre-
quency. The distinction between weakly and strongly oscillating bubbles, i. e., below
and beyond the dynamic Blake threshold, is very important. This is true obviously
for applications based on heavy bubble collapse, but also for structure formation of
acoustic cavitation bubbles, because acoustic forces, gas diffusion, and stability can
be changing dramatically when crossing this border. These issues are addressed in
the following sections.
3.2 Spherical shape stability

The spherical shape of a cavitation bubble is idealized. Due to surface tension, a static
bubble will always tend to form a sphere, which is also stable with respect to small
perturbations. This does not hold necessarily for a pulsating bubble. To estimate the
stability of a driven oscillating spherical bubble, usually the bubble shape is expanded
into spherical harmonics (modes), and the equations of motion of the corresponding
expansion coefficients are considered. For small excursions from the spherical form,
the equations can be linearized, and it turns out that then only unidirectional cou-
pling of the fundamental (radial) motion to the higher order surface modes persists
(no mutual coupling or back-coupling to the radial oscillation, see Refs. [4,5,23–25]).
Formally, in linear approximation all mode coefficients are described by parametri-
6
The notion “(in)active” relates to all cavitation effects due to a strong bubble collapse.
Nevertheless, bubbles below the dynamic Blake threshold oscillate, feel acoustic forces and
might be “active” from another point of view.
λ =1 λ =10
Figure 6. Stability of a spherical bubble with respect to parametric surface mode instability
in the parameter plane of equilibrium radius R0 and driving pressure amplitude pa ; driving
frequency 15 kHz. Colors indicate the stability with respect to the modes n = 2, 3, and 4.
Black: all modes stable, darkest blue: one mode unstable, blue: two modes unstable, and
light blue: all three modes unstable. Left: maximum allowed stable eigenvalue λ = 1, right:
λ = 10. At higher driving, all but very small bubbles (below the dynamic Blake threshold)
become unstable.
cally excited linear oscillator systems, which are for periodic radial oscillation of the
type of Hill’s differential equation. If am denotes the amplitude of the m-th surface
mode, its equation of motion reads
" #
Ṙ µ
äm + 3 + 2(m + 2)(2m + 1) 2 ȧm
R ρR
" #
σ R̈ µṘ
+(m − 1) (m + 1)(m + 2) 3 − + 2(m + 2) 3 am = 0 .
ρR R ρR
Here, the solution of the spherical bubble model, R(t), enters as the parametric driv-
ing. The bubble is considered to be spherically unstable, if at least one surface mode
amplitude reaches the actual bubble radius value (Rayleigh-Taylor instability 7 ) or
grows indefinitely in time (parametric instability). For simplicity, only the latter case
is considered in the following. It is easily calculated numerically by integrating the
spherical bubble model together with the linear mode amplitude equations. Because
of linearity of the latter, it is sufficient for a periodic radial motion to integrate over
one period and calculate the Floquet multipliers (eigenvalues of the “monodromy
matrix”, see Ref. [26]). If the absolute value of at least one mode is larger than one,
formally that mode would grow and finally destroy the bubble. In reality, the lin-
earization breaks down from some point on, and mode coupling would lead to energy
redistribution, also to the fundamental mode. Without considering this issue here in
7
For this calculation, one has to assume an initial size of a disturbance of the spherical
form, and the outcome slightly depends on this choice.
180 R. Mettin
Figure 7. Trapped single bubble shedding microbubbles and recollecting them (high-speed
recording at 2250 fps in a 25 kHz standing wave; frame width 1.2 mm; from Ref. [29]).
detail, it is possible to replace the absolute value “1” for an unstable eigenvalue by a
higher number, e. g. 10 or 100, to model the larger damping of the mode. Indeed ex-
perimentally observed surface instability of a single bubble could be better modelled
by this approach of an artificially higher stable eigenvalue [27,28]. An illustration is
given in Fig. 6, where the stability regions of several modes for a relevant parameter
range are plotted colour coded. Typically, the most unstable surface mode is n = 2,
and therefore it is often sufficient to calculate its behaviour.
If a bubble is spherically unstable, several things can happen: (1) It might shed
smaller bubbles to lose gas, reduce its equilibrium radius accordingly, and thus be-
come more stable (i. e., jump more to the bottom in Fig. 6). Afterwards, it might
(1a) regain spherical stability if the fragment disappears, or (1b) recollect the shed-
ded microbubble(s) in a continuing process and thus form a “jittering” or “dancing”
bubble, see Fig. 7 for an example. (2) Alternatively the bubble might split into
many fragments of similar size. The fragments can subsequently reunite again to
form one or more larger bubbles. If the destruction and merging process goes on,
a small cluster of fragment bubbles is observed, see Fig. 8. (3) The bubble might
get destroyed and vanish. This process is possibly an “atomization” into many very
small fragments that rapidly dissolve into the liquid.8 As the examples have shown,
the spherical instability does not necessarily mean a destruction of a bubble, but may
at times give rise to a multitude of possibly interacting bubbles and thus to a bubble
structure. As an extreme example, Fig. 9 shows a quite large bubble attached to a
transducer surface, a sonotrode tip. This bubble is long-term existent, but shows
strong deviations from (semi)spherical shape. The high-speed sequence reveals that
it is also strongly collapsing. It continuously sheds smaller and larger daughter bub-
bles, but keeps its size by remerging bubbles and possibly by diffusion processes.
From a spherical stability point of view, such bubbles should be very short-living,
but in some cases as the observed, they live quite long and serve as permanent bubble
source (cf. Sect. 2). Of course, the presence of a boundary is of importance here.
8
This happens typically in bubble trap experiments if the driving pressure is tuned too
high: the trapped bubble seems to disappear within a very short time [30].
Figure 8. Continuously merging and splitting small cluster of bubbles close to a pressure
antinode (high-speed recording with one frame per driving period, i. e., 25000 fps; exposure
time 1 µs; frame size approximately 1 mm); from Ref. [10].
Figure 9. Large bubble at a 20.61 kHz sonotrode tip. The subsequent frames (top left
to bottom right) from a high-speed recording at 20000 fps (exposure time 20 µs, frame size
approx. 5 mm) show one picture per acoustic cycle. The bubble is roughly half-spherical
and strongly oscillating in a subharmonic (period-doubled) way. It is continuously shedding
microbubbles and exists much longer than the sequence shows.
Frequently, however, one encounters the cases (1a) and (3) from above, and the
bubble sizes are limited by the spherical shape stability threshold. This will be used
later for an upper estimate of the sizes of longer living bubbles.
3.3 Rectified diffusion

The mass and the species of non-condensable gas inside a bubble can change due
to diffusion through the bubble wall, i. e., from or into the liquid. Typically gases
have a finite solubility in liquids, and in dilute solutions at equilibrium, the gas
182 R. Mettin
concentration of species i in the liquid ci is proportional to the gas partial pressure

pi above the liquid: ci = pi /Hi with Henry’s constant Hi .9
If we consider a static gas bubble in a liquid that is saturated with the gas, the
partial pressure inside the bubble will be higher than the static pressure outside
because of surface tension. Therefore the gas will go into solution and the bubble
will dissolve sooner or later. This process is even accelerated as the bubble shrinks,
since the surface tension grows with the inverse bubble size. For small bubbles in
the micrometer range, dissolution happens quite rapidly on the scale of milliseconds
to seconds [31]. The same holds for undersaturated liquids. Indeed, only for oversat-
urated liquids a static diffusional equilibrium can be reached, which however turns
out to be unstable: bubbles either dissolve, or grow unlimited (and then rise to the
liquid surface due to gravity). This behaviour demands for a stabilization mechanism
of microbubbles in the context of cavitation nuclei [4,5].
If the bubble is not static, but oscillating in a sound pressure field, the bubble
size and the gas pressure change on the acoustic time scale which is typically fast
compared to the diffusional time scale. It turns out that the gas diffusion into the
bubble is favoured in such a case by three mechanisms [5]: (i) the surface effect,
i. e., a larger gas-liquid interface at low gas pressure in the expanded bubble cycle;
(ii) the shell effect, leading to a larger concentration gradient at the bubble wall
during the expanded bubble phase; and (iii) the nonlinear oscillation effect, causing
a longer time per period spent at large bubble sizes, i. e., at low inside gas pressures.
Mechanisms (i) and (ii) can be understood if one recalls that the diffusion is governed
by Fick’s law and thus the mass flow rate is proportional to the interface area and the
concentration gradient [5]. Mechanism (iii) follows from the unsymmetric potential
of the bubble oscillation, representing a hard spring oscillator for compression and a
soft spring for expansion [16].
The above effects can overbalance the dissolution tendency given by surface tension,
and oscillating bubbles can show a net growth for saturated and even undersaturated
liquids. This phenomenon has been named in the literature rectified diffusion [32,33].
In addition, the nonlinear bubble resonances and the dynamic Blake threshold can
give rise to diffusionally stable bubble sizes 10 This is used for example in bubble
traps, where single bubbles can be captured in an acoustic standing wave field close
to a pressure antinode. Bubble trap experiments have become famous for the single-
bubble experiments on sonoluminescence [30]. In water, usually significant degassing
was used to reach the diffusional equilibrium, but it has been demonstrated that also
in saturated liquid diffusion-stable single bubbles can be achieved [28].
For a spherically and periodically oscillating bubble, the gas diffusion is governed
9
This rule is only approximately valid, and Hi depends on both the solute and the
solvent.
10
The term equilibrium radius introduced above and its symbol R0 denotes the equilibrium
with respect to static pressure conditions, i. e., the resulting bubble radius if suddenly the
acoustic pressure would be turned off and the bubble came to rest (therefore also rest radius).
If we refer to the rest radius of a bubble with zero net gas diffusion, this would be denoted
as diffusional equilibrium radius.
up to some approximation by the following equation [33–35]:

−1
dR0 DRG T c0 4σ R c∞ 2σ 3 hR/R0 i
= p0 + − 1+ R0 . (1)
dt R0 3R0 R0 c0 R 0 p0 h(R/R0 )4 i
Here the following symbols are used: D diffusion constant, RG gas constant, T
temperature, c0 and c∞ gas concentration in saturation and far from the bubble,
and h.i is indicating a time average.
In an extended cavitating field, rectified gas diffusion can play a role for the life-
cycle of individual bubbles and thus for the size distribution in the bubble population.
This depends, among other parameters, on the gas content of the liquid, spherical
shape stability of the bubbles, local pressure distribution and bubble translation.
This will be discussed later.
It should also be noted that the well-known degassing of liquids by ultrasound
is actually based on cavitation, and that rectified diffusion processes play here an
important role.
4 Acoustic forces and bubble motion
Bubbles in acoustic fields do not only perform volume oscillations, but they also
move in space. These translational motions are mainly caused by acoustic forces,
the Bjerknes forces, that are introduced in the following. To complete the picture of
bubble motion, its virtual mass and viscous drag are also briefly discussed.
4.1 Primary Bjerknes forces

It is an everyday experience that bubbles in quiet liquids rise to the surface. The
reason for this is the hydrostatic pressure, which is, roughly speaking, pushing with
a higher force on the bottom surface than on the top surface of the bubble. Math-
ematically, the net force on the bubble is yielded by summing up the forces on all
surface elements, and by Gauss’ theorem, we find
Z Z Z Z Z
F = p dS = ∇p dV .
If the pressure gradient is slowly varying over the scale of the bubble’s size, we can
substitute the right-hand side integral by V ∇p(x0 ), where x0 is the position of the
bubble center. This approximation is usually allowed, but care has to be taken in
cases where the bubbles reach wavelength extensions (like degassing processes at
higher frequencies).
The hydrostatic pressure turns out to be typically negligible compared to the effects
caused by the sound field: in water, gravity creates a gradient of about 10 mPa/µm,
while in a pressure wave of 1 bar amplitude and frequency of some MHz we find
gradients reaching hundreds of Pa/µm.
The sound pressure gradients and the bubble volumes are time varying, and the
net force on a bubble depends on the time average
F B1 = hV (t)∇p(x0 , t)i , (2)

184 R. Mettin
which is called the primary Bjerknes force.

The standard discussion of this average considers weak bubble oscillations and a
plane standing or travelling pressure wave [4,5]. Then the results can be captured by
the relative phase of pressure and bubble oscillation, which depends on the bubble
size R0 in relation to the linear resonance radius Rres : larger bubbles are attracted by
pressure nodes, and smaller by the pressure antinodes. In propagating waves, bubbles
around Rres feel a strong force in the wave’s direction, and the force diminishes for
bubbles much smaller or much larger than the linear resonance size.
In the case of strongly driven bubbles, which is typical for cavitating liquids, F B1
becomes more complicated because of the anharmonic bubble oscillation. In par-
ticular, the collapse time of stronger and stronger expanding bubbles shifts to later
instances, and thus the primary Bjerknes force in standing waves can change its sign
at high pressure zones for small bubbles. This effect was first noted in the context of
SBSL [36,37], and it is very important for cavitation fields: also bubbles and bubble
clusters much smaller than the linear resonance radius can get expelled from pressure
antinodes, and the high pressure regions may get depleted.
Figure 10 shows for the two typical ultrasonic frequencies 20 kHz and 1 MHz the
regions in R0 − pa parameter space where the bubbles are driven away from the
pressure antinode due to the primary Bjerknes force. Here, pa is the local driving
amplitude at the bubble’s position and can usually be identified with a spatial po-
sition in the standing wave. In the case of a traveling wave, the changes caused by
nonlinear bubble oscillations are not so dramatic, although the forces can get much
larger than for linear approximation, and also parameter combinations exist where
the sign reverses, i. e., the bubbles feel a primary Bjerknes force against the wave
direction [38].
200 400
180
350
160
300
140
120 250
pa [kPa]
pa [kPa]
100 200
80
150
60
100
40
20 20 kHz 50 1 MHz
0 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
R0 [µm] R0 [µm]
Figure 10. Sign of the primary Bjerknes force in a standing sound wave in the parameter
space of bubble equilibrium radius R0 and pressure amplitude pa . White areas indicate a
force towards the high pressure regions, dark areas a force towards the pressure nodes. Left:
f = 20 kHz, Rres = 138 µm; right: f = 1 MHz, Rres = 3.15 µm (water at normal conditions,
κ = 1, σ = 0.07275 N/m).
A convenient notation for more general (single frequency) pressure fields is obtained
by introducing a spatially varying amplitude and phase: p(x, t) = pa (x) cos[ωt +
φ(x)]. Then the primary Bjerknes force reads
F B1 = −∇pa (x) h V (t) cos (ωt + φ(x)) i

+ pa (x)∇φ(x) h V (t) sin (ωt + φ(x)) i . (3)
Now we can associate the first term on the right-hand side as a standing wave con-
tribution, and the second term as a travelling wave part. For the ideal cases of a
plane standing (resp. travelling) wave, pa (x) = cos(k · x) and φ = const (resp.
φ(x) = −k · x and pa = const) for some wave vector k. It is immediately clear that
then the respective other terms disappear. In some situations, the sound field has
the character of a decaying (or damped) travelling wave, and both terms are con-
tributing. Then they may be counteracting and leading to spatial locations of stable
force equilibrium. In the field in front of sonotrode tips, such stagnation points have
been observed and modelled (Ref. [39], Sect. 6.3).
4.2 Secondary Bjerknes forces

Oscillating bubbles radiate sound, and neighboured bubbles interact via the emitted
pressure field. The pressure itself adds to the acoustic driving of the adjacent bubble,
and the pressure gradient leads to a net force analogous to the primary Bjerknes
force in Eq. (2). It turns out that the driving coupling has often negligible effect
compared to the primary (incident) pressure, but the gradient force is essential at
short bubble distances. Its time average is called the secondary Bjerknes force, and
to some approximation, it can be written [40]
ρ (x2 − x1 ) D E
F 1,2
B2 = − V̇ 1 (t)V̇ 2 (t) . (4)
4π |x2 − x1 |3
Here F 1,2
B2 is the force of bubble 1 on bubble 2, and the time average is over the time
derivatives of the product of both bubble volumes V1 and V2 . It can be seen that
the force decays with one over distance squared, and this is exactly like for both
the electromagnetic and the gravitational force. The sign of the force, however, as
well as its absolute strength, is determined by the time-averaged term. This in turn
depends on several paramters like bubble size and acoustic pressure at the bubbles’
locations. Different situations are therefore possible, and in the linearized case, this
discussion can be reduced to the relative oscillation phases [4,5]: bubbles oscillating
in phase attract each other, while in antiphase, they repel.11 In many cases, however,
the bubbles are of similar size and oscillating in similar phase, and thus the effect
of the secondary Bjerknes force is frequently a mutual bubble attraction. Indeed
this attracting force dominates over the primary Bjerknes force from some close
11
It might be noted that the equality of the force of bubble 1 on bubble 2 and vice versa is
an effect of the approximation of an instantaneous interaction, i. e., of infinite sound speed.
Taking into account a time delay in Eq. (4) destroys the symmetry, which leads to situations
where one bubble attracts the other while being itself repelled!
186 R. Mettin
20 kHz 10 kPa 20 kHz 50 kPa 20 kHz 100 kPa

180 180 180
160 160 160
140 140 140
120 120 120

R02 [µm]
R02 [µm]
R02 [µm]
100 100 100
80 80 80
60 60 60
40 40 40
20 20 20
0 0 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
R01 [µm] R01 [µm] R01 [µm]
1 MHz 10 kPa 1 MHz 100 kPa 1 MHz 200 kPa

4 4 4
3.5 3.5 3.5
3 3 3
2.5 2.5 2.5

R02 [µm]
R02 [µm]
R02 [µm]
2 2 2
1.5 1.5 1.5
1 1 1
0.5 0.5 0.5
0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
R01 [µm] R01 [µm] R01 [µm]
Figure 11. Sign of the secondary Bjerknes force between two bubbles of equilibrium
radius R01 and R02 for fixed pressure amplitude pa . White areas indicate an attractive
force between the bubbles, and dark areas indicate mutual repulsion. Top row: f = 20 kHz,
Rres = 138 µm, pa = 10, 50, and 200 kPa; bottom row: f = 1 MHz, Rres = 3.15 µm, pa = 10,
100, and 200 kPa (water under normal conditions, κ = 1, σ = 0.07275 N/m).
distance on, and bubble coalescence is typically the consequence. In Fig. 7 the
subsequent approach and merging of the microbubble after ejection is in fact due
to the secondary Bjerknes force. The figure also shows one reason which hinders a
limitless accumulation of gas by bubble coalescence: the loss of spherical stability.
If nonlinearity is taken into account, modifications of the simple picture of the
secondary Bjerknes force occur. Essentially, the absolute strength of the force can be
much larger than from linear calculation, and also the size can be inverted [40]. Exam-
ples for sign distributions of the secondary Bjerknes force in the nonlinear oscillation
case are shown in Fig. 11. Again 20 kHz and 1 MHz are chosen for illustration, and
the driving pressures are stepwise elevated to highlight the nonlinear effects. While
for 10 kPa still the classic picture with respect to the linear resonance radius occurs
(a “checkerboard”), already moderately high pressure amplitudes lead to “stripes”
that reflect the nonlinear resonances. The strong bubble response at the dynamic
Blake threshold becomes more and more important and determines the sign of the
force for small bubbles: in a way it takes over the role of the linear resonance to
separate attractive and repulsive combinations of bubble sizes.
Further effects, like non-spherical distortions at close distances and coupling of
oscillation and translation, have to be taken into account for a more complete picture
of the force between two oscillating bubbles. Even more, dissipative mechanisms like
viscosity and heat conduction can also play an important role. However, for many
aspects with respect to bubble structure formation, the spherical, nonlinear and time
averaged model is a good first choice. For a much more detailed discussion of the
Bjerknes forces see e. g. Ref. [41] and the references cited therein.
4.3 Added mass and viscous drag

The inertia of a moving bubble is dominated by the virtual or added mass of the liquid
circulating around it, and not by its gas mass (which is typically negligible). From
the assumption of potential flow, one can derive that the added mass Ma of a sphere
amounts to half of the mass of the displaced liquid, i. e., Ma = ρV /2 = 2πρR3 /3 [6].
The force associated with a temporal change of this inertia reads
d 2 h i
FM = − [Ma (t)U (t)] = − πρ 3R2 (t)Ṙ(t)U (t) + R3 (t)U̇ (t) , (5)
dt 3
where U is the velocity of the bubble relative to the liquid. Note that the inertia is
changed both by acceleration of the bubble centroid and by a bubble volume change
caused by radial oscillation. This can lead for example to a “jerky” motion of a
bubble during its collapse [42] due to conservation of (liquid flow) momentum. A
direct observation of this phenomenon is shown in Fig. 12. Although the picture
demonstrates that the bubble motion needs not to be smooth, sometimes an averag-
ing approach is used to facilitate calculations. For example, the added mass is set
0.5 mm
Figure 12. Pseudo-streak image from a high-speed video sequence below a sonotrode
tip in water: vertical stripes from successive frames are printed next to each other, time
proceeding from left to right. The acoustic frequency is 20 kHz, and the framerate 50000 fps,
yielding an interframe time of 0.4 acoustic periods, which was also the exposure time. The
centroid positions of two bubbles that move upwards are marked by white lines. It can
clearly be observed that the bubble position frequently jumps upwards during collapse, and
stops during expansion. One such jumping event is magnified in the inset, and because of
the smearing due to the relatively long exposure time, the bubble shrinking simultaneous to
the upward translation is revealed. Note also the relatively fast net velocity of the bubbles
of 1 to 1.5 m/s.
188 R. Mettin
3
constant to M a = 2πρR /3 where the bar indicates a time average [43]. This un-
couples the translational motion from the oscillation and introduces a certain error
which is not always negligible [44,45].
The bubble translational motion is counteracted by a viscous drag force. This
force can be found analytically for a spherical bubble and stationary low Reynolds
number flow (Re = 2|U |R/ν 1, ν being the kinematic viscosity). Depending on
the supposed boundary condition at the bubble surface it reads [6,46,47]
(1) (2)
F D = −4 πρνRU or F D = −6 πρνRU . (6)
(1)
Here F D is calculated with a zero shear stress boundary condition at the bubble
(2)
surface, and F D assumes a zero tangential velocity, i. e., no-slip boundary condition.
While the former case reflects an “ideal” gas-liquid interface, the latter formula is
valid for a “sticky” or “dirty” bubble, equivalent to a solid sphere. Indeed, surface ac-
tive contaminants in the liquid may gather at the bubble interface, and in many cases
(1)
experimental values from rising bubbles in non-clean liquids tend to yield F D [46].
If faster bubble translations are considered, the high Reynolds number limit may be
encountered, if the bubble is small enough to be still spherical and not deformed (in
water up to Re ≈ 800 [46]). In this situation the “clean” bubble boundary condition
yields [46,47]
(3)
F D = −12 πρνRU , (7)
and the “dirty” bubble case results in additional drag proportional to U 2 [46].
For oscillating bubbles, the drag becomes time dependent, and analysis gets more
complicated. Some limiting cases are derived in Ref. [48]. In particular, the limit of
(3)
high Re or high (Ṙ/U )Re yields for an ideal (clean) bubble interface again F D , but
with the substitution of the constants R and U by their time-dependent counter-
parts R(t) and U (t). Measurements of bubble motion in ultrasonic standing waves
at smaller Re, but higher (Ṙ/U )Re support this result [10,49]. However, more exper-
imental investigations, in particular in strong fields, should be undertaken to verify
the theoretical approaches.
5 Bubble life cycles
If we combine all discussed aspects of single bubble dynamics, we can consider the
“life” of a bubble in a given liquid and sound field. We restrict our viewpoint to
translation and gas diffusion, both supposed to happen on a slower time scale than
the volume oscillation. In a standing wave, the fate of a bubble is determined by its
initial size R0 and position in space x, or, equivalently, the sound pressure amplitude
pa (x) at the initial position. Its life cycle can be represented by a trajectory in the
plane of R0 and pa . Main features can be seen if characteristic lines are drawn in that
plane: the threshold of spherical shape instability (SI), the inversion of the primary
Bjerknes force (BJ), and the rectified diffusion threshold (RD). Examples of such
diagrams are shown in Fig. 13.
The general direction of a bubble trajectory in this parameter space is towards the
right above the RD line, and towards the top below the BJ line. The space above
200 300
20 kHz 1 MHz
250
150
200
pa [kPa]
pa [kPa]
100 150
100
50
SI SI
BJ 50 BJ
RD 1.0 RD 1.0
RD 0.1 RD 0.1
0 0
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
R0 [µm] R0 [µm]
Figure 13. Phase diagrams for bubbles in a standing wave, indicating the lines of surface
instability (SI) and Bjerknes force inversion (BJ). Also, the thresholds of rectified diffusion
are given for water at gas saturation (RD 1.0) and degassed to 10% of saturation (RD
0.1). Left: f = 20 kHz, right: f = 1 MHz (water at normal conditions, κ = 1). Points of
accumulation are marked by a circle.
the SI line is forbidden, as bubbles there would be splitting into smaller ones soon
(and thus jump to the left). From such an analysis, one can find accumulation points
in the parameter plane: bubbles tend to gather at crossings of the BJ line with a
negative slope part of the SI line, as long as such a point lies above the RD line. In
the examples of Fig. 13, such a point is close to 175 kPa and 5 µm at 20 kHz, and
175 kPa and 2 µm at 1 MHz, respectively. The conclusion is that in standing waves
of the given frequencies “typical” or “frequently found” parameters of the bubbles
are those of the accumulation points.
If one considers the actual trajectories in the R0 –pa plane, antinode pressure and
wavelength have to be fixed, and added mass and viscous drag have to be taken
into account as indicated in Sect. 4.3. An example is given in Fig. 14(a) where lines
are plotted that represent the way of test bubbles through that plane. The shown
case is interesting, because a trajectory separation along a line, similar to a water
shed, can be observed. Indeed it is this water shed line which separates growing from
dissolving bubbles, and not the RD threshold: bubbles moving fast enough towards
a high presure region can escape from the dissolution zone [50]. This leads to the
surprising result that, for the indicated parameters and irrespective of their location,
almost all bubbles of rest radius larger than about 6 µm finally do not dissolve, but
grow until surface instability sets in!
Now we briefly turn to plane travelling waves (compare also Ref. [50]). As the
pressure amplitude does not vary in space, the life diagrams look simpler: for a
given pressure value, it is sufficient to consider paths in the R0 –x plane, where x is
the coordinate in direction of the wave vector. Examples are shown in Fig. 14(b) for
20 kHz. In the examined parameter range of small rest radii it is found that significant
(macroscopic) translation appears only for growing bubbles. On the other hand, at
elevated pressures the motion is rather fast, and the bubbles do not grow significantly
before they covered a wavelength’s distance. At intermediate pressure values, a size
190 R. Mettin
140
(a) 10
(b)
120
1
100
0.1
80
pa [Pa]
x [mm]
60 0.01
40 0.001
0.0001 0.10 bar

20 0.55 bar
1.00 bar
1.50 bar
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
R0 [µm]
R0 [µm]
Figure 14. (a) Bubble life trajectories (red) in the plane of rest radius R0 and pressure
amplitude pa for a harmonic plane standing wave at 20 kHz and 250 kPa antinode pressure.
Trajectories generally run from bottom to the top, i. e., bubbles travel to higher values
of pa . The black dotted line is the RD threshold, and the blue line marks the effective
border between dissolving and finally growing bubbles. The green, dashed line is the SI
line. (b) Trajectories in the parameter plane of R0 and x in a plane travelling wave of
20 kHz. Different colours (line styles) indicate different acoustic pressures, as given in the
plot. The bubble motion is generally towards the top, i. e., to larger x (from Ref. [50]).
levelling of the growing bubbles occurs: the longer the travelled distance, the more
the size distribution width of the bubble population is shrinking.
In a similar fashion, it is possible to discuss general features of bubble translation
and gas diffusion in other acoustic set-ups of different frequencies or geometries. It
should be kept in mind that all is based upon a single spherical bubble in a given
and fixed pressure field. This approximation excludes, for instance, interaction with
additional bubbles, and any influence of the bubble distribution on the sound field.
At higher bubble densities, however, both effects come into play, and the life cycle
inspection may turn out to be incomplete.
6 Structure formation
If we focus our interest on multibubble systems and their structures in acoustic fields,
one crucial point to consider is certainly the origin of the bubbles (compare Sect. 2).
However, it turns out not to be easy to assess or predict how many bubbles of what
size are created where in the liquid. For simulations, experimentally observed data
can be used as an input for this problem, and often this is still the most reasonable
approach. From this, heuristic bubble generation models can be derived.
Furthermore, bubble-bubble interaction is an essential issue. With help of the
secondary Bjerknes force (Sect. 4.2) and reasonable assumptions for bubble collision
and merging, it is possible to “close” the theoretical description of a multi-bubble
system. Between creation and destruction, each bubble follows its equations of mo-
tion, derived by the balance of forces. We add the index i to indicate the number of
the bubble and get a system of equations, where N is the total bubble number:
X j,i
F iM + F iD + F iB1 + F B2 = 0 , 1 ≤ i ≤ N . (8)
j6=i
The bubble sizes are defined by the rest radii R0i . To describe their variation in time,
a gas diffusion law like Eq. (1) can be used, augmented by rules for merging with
other bubbles and splitting after surface instability.
This proposed N -body problem has some particularities, like a changing number
of particles12 and forces that depend on the absolute position in space (i. e., on the
local sound pressure). It can be solved numerically, and the effort is considerably
reduced if approximations of the forces are taken. In particular a temporal averaging
over the oscillation period can be used, although some (typically small) errors are
introduced in added mass and drag (compare Sect. 4.3).
Hinsch employed an early version of this type of particle model already in 1975
to calculate the merging process of a few bubbles [51]. Yet, the idea was further
advanced only in the 1990s [43,52], probably due to the increased possibilities of
computer power. In the following we present some results from recent simulations of
bubble structures.
6.1 Streamer filaments

In many cases filamentary or “dendritic” arrangements of acoustic cavitation bubbles
are encountered [4,5,53]. The bubbles move relatively fast along branches that can
unite to form a new branch, like rivers form junctions. In a standing wave, a typical
picture is that many branches arrange around a pressure antinode, and bubbles
therefore stream inward the filamentary conglomerate [43]. At the center they may
form a larger bubble or bubble cluster where microbubbles are shed off, sometimes
visible as a “mist”. The microbubbles dissolve and thus compensate for the gas
arriving from the filaments.
The filamentary structure in a cubic resonator, driven at 25 kHz, has been analyzed
by stereoscopic high-speed recordings in Ref. [54]. Some of the reconstructed bubble
paths have afterwards been simulated by the particle approach described above. For
every bubble, only the first position and velocity have been used as an input for the
model, and the bubble sizes have been given a starting value of 5 µm. The pressure
value at the antinode and its position have been slightly fitted within the error
tolerance of a measurement. A direct comparison of experimental and calculated
bubble tracks is shown in Fig. 15. The correspondence is quite reasonable, and
the conclusion can be drawn that the dominant forces causing the bubble motion
have been taken into account by the particle model. Still, not every detail is met
perfectly by the simulation. This is probably due to variations in bubble sizes and
the fine structure of the filaments: they may contain smaller bubbles, overlooked by
the image processing of the experimental data, and travelling bubbles can undergo
repeated split-and-merge processes. Such phenomena add “noise” to the N -body
system, and because of the nonlinear bubble-bubble interaction, it is rather sensitive
12
N is not fixed in time because of nucleation, merging, splitting, and dissolution.
192 R. Mettin
z [mm]
tracked paths
simulation
5
4
3
2
1
0
-1
-2
-3
5
4
3
2
1
y [mm] 0
-1
-2 2 3
-3 -1 0 1
-4 -4 -3 -2
-6 -5 x [mm]
Figure 15. Comparison of experimental and simulated bubble tracks in a filamentary

streamer (from Ref. [54]).
to any disturbance. Nevertheless, the simulated bubble tracks can capture essential
features of the observed structures, like the gross arrangement of filaments, bubble
translation velocities, or bubble collision frequencies.
6.2 Double layer structure

A bubble structure that is frequently found in intense, well developed standing waves
is a double layer of dendritic filaments (“jellyfish” structure [53,55,56]). Experimental
observations at 25 kHz are shown in Fig. 16(a) and (b). The two layers are arranged
symmetrically to a pressure nodal plane, and each layer is situated between pressure
node and antinode region. Bubbles occur from the zone in-between the layers and
travel on dendrites to the layer centers. From time to time, bigger bubble clusters
form in the layers and move back towards the nodal plane, dissolving on their way.
Figures 16(c) and (d) present a simulation by the particle approach. The sound
field has been set to a standing wave of 25 kHz with an antinode pressure of 200 kPa,
and bubble creation has been assumed to happen in ring regions close to the pressure
nodal plane. It can be seen that the main aspect of the structure is captured by the
model. Detailed bubble tracks have not been recorded experimentally in this case,
and the validation of the simulation approach is substantially by eye. Nevertheless,
the model is helpful to explain the occurence and the shape of the structure. Impor-
tant aspects, though, concerning the bubble sources and the dynamics of the larger
bubble clusters, still have to be clarified. Possibly the liquid flow between the layers
is a further factor to be taken into account, as recent results from sonochemilumi-
nescence measurements suggest [57].
1 cm
(a) (b)
(c)
(d)
Figure 16. Double layer (“jellyfish”) structure of bubbles in a standing wave. Photographs
from the side (a) and from the top (b) in a 25 kHz resonator (water). Simulated bubble
tracks are given in (c) and (d) (from Ref. [53]).
6.3 Cone bubble structure

As a final example we briefly discuss a conical bubble arrangement that appears at
larger emitting surfaces at high intensities (Fig. 17, left). It was first reported to
appear below a sonotrode (horn transducer) of larger surface area at 20 kHz [58,59],
but similar bubble structures are seen, for instance, at extended submerged surface
transducers [53]. Bubbles are generated directly at the emitter, and they travel rather
fast away from it, in direction of the radiated wave. On their way, they form a cone,
i. e., the bubble tracks meet close to a distinct point (the tip of the cone). There the
bubbles stop and partly merge to form larger bubbles. Those, in turn, move further
away from the sonotrode.
The pressure field forms a decaying progressive wave with a local maximum some
centimetres in front of the surface, lying inside the bubbly cone and not at the cone
tip [59]. The bubbles are driven to the tip point by primary Bjerknes forces, and in
this case both terms on the right hand side of Eq. (3) contribute. Indeed, the tip
point is for smaller bubbles a stagnation point in the sense that there both terms
just cancel, i. e., the pressure amplitude gradient term and the phase gradient term
are equal but of opposite sign [39]. This is not true for larger bubbles, and if smaller
ones grow by rectified diffusion and merging, they sooner or later are driven again
away from the tip in the forward wave direction.
194 R. Mettin
Figure 17. Left: Experimental cone bubble structure (sonotrode of 12 cm diameter, visible
on top, driven at 20.5 kHz; from Ref. [59]). Right: Simulated bubble distribution (note the
different scales of the axes; from Ref. [39]).
With reasonable assumptions on pressure amplitudes and bubble sizes, one can
obtain a quite similar scenario and bubble structure in the particle simulation. An
example is shown on the right in Fig. 17. For the calculation presented an idealized
analytical pressure and phase distribution has been used, and cone extension and
bubble velocities are not matching closely. Nevertheless, the structure is reproduced
in principle.
7 Conclusion and perspectives
In this article, it has been outlined how macroscopic manifestations of acoustic cav-
itation can be approached from a single bubble point of view. The formation of
cavitation fields out of individual bubbles was the motivation for a closer consid-
eration of the forces on and the life cycles of acoustically driven bubbles. Several
important factors have been discussed: the origin of bubbles, their volume oscilla-
tions and shape stability, gas diffusion, acoustic forces and bubble translation. Some
experimental observations have been presented and theoretical concepts have been
reviewed, partly on basis of inevitable or useful idealizations and approximations.
The different aspects have been condensed into bubble life cycle diagrams that re-
veal a first idea of the bubble populations and conditions expected in a given set-up.
Further information can be extracted from the trajectories of single bubbles in their
parameter space. The next step was the treatment of multibubble fields in space and
time as an N -body or interacting particle system. Although certain details of bub-
ble nucleation and narrow interaction are still not sufficiently known, the numerical
solution of the equations of bubble motion can reproduce various observed bubble
structures if suitable heuristic assumptions are included. Some examples of numer-

ical structure reconstruction have been presented, and the results are qualitatively
and partially even quantitatively satisfying.
Possible extensions of the proposed particle model approach are manifold. The
most relevant physical phenomena that have been neglected in the presentation so far
are probably the streaming of liquid and the modification of the initial sound field by
the presence of a finite bubble density. The streaming should have a distinct influence
on the (re)distribution of (passive) microbubbles and thus bubble sources. At the
same time, its influence on strongly oscillating (active) bubbles is less pronounced,
because their Bjerknes force induced motion is often an order of magnitude faster
than the sound field induced liquid motion. The alteration of the sound field by the
bubbles can happen for various reasons. They damp and scatter the sound wave
and thus can cause increased dissipation and shielding. Also the impedance of the
medium can change already for low bubble densities [60] which, for instance, detunes
resonators. The latter effect has been investigated for a special case in Ref. [61], where
the particle code has been coupled to a continuous model of sound propagation in
bubbly liquid [62,63]. Indeed, a promising way to approach a better and universal
simulation tool for acoustic cavitation might be a connection of (microscopic) particle
simulation and (macroscopic) sound field and possibly flow field calculation on basis
of continuous descriptions. First steps in this direction have already been taken, as
in Ref. [61], but still many phenomena have to be investigated in more detail, and
much work lies ahead until a comprehensive and satisfactory description of acoustic
cavitation fields is reached.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks all actual and former members of the nonlinear dynamics and cavitation
group of the DPI at Göttingen University. The friendly and stimulating atmosphere at the
institute was a great help in any respect. Special thanks go to Werner Lauterborn, Thomas
Kurz, and Ulrich Parlitz for continuous and strong support, fruitful discussions and pleasant
joint work. I also want to thank specially Dagmar Krefting, Philipp Koch, Jürgen Appel,
Jann Ohle Claussen, Till Nowak, Alexei Moussatov and Bertrand Dubus, because I used
material from shared work in this article. Last but not least I thank the staff of the electrical
and mechanical workshops of the institute for excellent support.
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Physics of stone fragmentation

and new concept of wide-focus and low-pressure
extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy
Wolfgang Eisenmenger1 and Udo Kaatze2
1
Erstes Physikalisches Institut, Universität Stuttgart
Pfaffenwaldring 57, 70550 Stuttgart, Germany
2
Abstract. In this contribution a new fragmentation mechanism by circumferential qua-

sistatic compression using evanescent waves in a stone is described. The high efficiency
of such “squeezing” process in fragmentation experiments, utilizing a self-focussing elec-
tromagnetic shock wave generator developed at the University of Stuttgart, is shown for
artificial stones as well as for clinical applications. The method relies on the wide focus
of the generator, with focal diameter comparable to or larger than the stone diameter. It
comprises a significantly smaller peak pressure of the shock waves, with many substantial
advantages for the extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL). A first clinical study at
seven hospitals in China, in which a total of 297 patients has been treated with wide-focus
and low-pressure ESWL, revealed (i) a beneficial average number of only 1532 shock pulses
for successful teratment, (ii) a small mean of 1.39 sessions per patient, (iii) a high stone-free
rate of 86 per cent after a follow-up of three months, and no necessity for pain medica-
tion and auxiliary measures. Additionally, with respect to the conventional narrow-focus
ESWL, larger focal width involves reduced aperture and increased positional flexibility. It
also enables the treatment of larger stones with a wider spatial distribution of fragments
and it avoids the necessity of X-ray control during treatment, because ultrasonic positioning
appears to be sufficient.
1 Introduction
Almost three per cent of the adult population is affected by kidney stones. Kidney
stones are polycrystalline concrements that form from minerals and proteins in the
urine. Stones come in various compositions and in sizes varying between one mil-
limeter and some centimeters. Until about three decades ago, stones too large to
pass through the urinary tract have been removed by surgery, called lithotomy. For
centuries the operations bore a serious risk. In the middle of the nineteenth century,
about fourteen per cent of operations resulted in the patient’s death. The intro-
duction of general anaesthesia and aseptic conditions reduced the risk of lithotomy
significantly.
200 W. Eisenmenger and U. Kaatze
The successful extracorporeal disintegration of stones in the seventies of the last

century, using acoustical waves or shock waves in Saarbrücken [1] and Friedrichshafen
[2], has revolutionized the treatment of urinary lithiasis. Extracorporeal shock wave
lithotripsy (ESWL) has received rapid acceptance, because of its noninvasive nature,
high efficiency, and ease of use. Lithotripsy is the most effective non-surgical pro-
cedure for the disintegration of kidney stones ever developed. It is an alternative
to surgery for seventy to eighty per cent of patients with kidney stones. Therefore,
within a very few years, ESWL became the standard treatment for stones in the
kidney and ureter worldwide. Stones are comminuted into small fragments which
are passed with the urine during the weeks after treatment. The risk for patients
to suffer major complications is distinctly lower than with surgical stone removal.
The unique development of ESWL has been described in various review articles and
textbooks [3–8].
Despite increasing perfection in the lithotripter generations that followed the first
Dornier HM3 device, there is currently only limited agreement on the relevant stone
breaking mechanisms. Some authors consider cavitation, besides shear and spalling,
as the most important force for the ultimate stone fragmentation in applications of
conventional lithotripters [8,9]. Cavitation is believed to cause trauma to thin-walled
vessels in the kidney and in adjacent tissue as side effects, leading to short-term
complications and to scar and chronic loss of tissue function [8]. Alternatively, in
experiments with focal diameters on the order of the stone diameter, evidence for a
squeezing mechanism has been found [10]. In addition to the question of the stone
fragmentation mechanism, it has become obvious that, since the promising intro-
duction of the Dornier HM3, progress in ESWL techniques has been unexpectedly
slow [11]. The further optimization of the physical parameters of the pressure shock
waves with respect to fragmentation efficiency and avoidance of side effects has been
scarce and is still matter of a lively scientific debate [7,12].
In this article we summarize the results on the efficient mechanism of stone frag-
mentation by wide-focus and low-pressure shock waves, which one of us has obtained
at the University of Stuttgart [10]. We also review clinical studies [13,14] demon-
strating successful treatment of a large group of patients with kidney stones, without
necessity for preventive measures, using an advanced ESWL conception. It involves
a wide-focus low-pressure lithotripter that had been developed in cooperation be-
tween the Erstes Physikalisches Institut of the University of Stuttgart and the Xixin
Medical Instruments Co. Ltd., Suzhou, China.
2 Lithotripter shock wave generation
Shock wave lithotripters are currently produced by more than ten companies. As an
example, Fig. 1 shows the Xixin instrument, meanwhile named XX-ES lithotripter [15],
as it has been used in the clinical studies which we report here. During treatment
the patient rests on an examination couch which is provided with X-ray equipment
and/or ultrasonic B-scan facilities for the optimum positioning. For the treatment of
the patient in either dorsal or face-down position the lithotripter is equipped with a
shock wave generator in an overcouch or undercouch arrangement. The shock wave
Wide-focus low-pressure ESWL 201
Figure 1. Lithotripter of Xixin Medical Instruments Co. Ltd., China, equipped with
self-focussing electromagnetic shock wave generator from the University of Stuttgart.
is normally coupled to the patient’s body via a water-filled cushion and a gel coat.
Various principles of shock wave generation are used [4]. In the electrohydraulic,
or spark-gap, technology the wave is created under water by generation of an elec-
trical discharge between two tips of an electrode (Fig. 2). The discharge produces
a vaporization bubble which expands and immediately collapses, generating a high-
energy pressure wave thereby. The electrode tips are located in the first focus of an
ellipsoidal reflector made of suitable metal. Hence the high-energy pressure waves
created in this point converge at the second focal point of the ellipse where pressure
is sufficiently high for fragmentation of stones.
In the piezoelectric method a shock wave is generated by an array of some tens
to thousands of piezoelectric elements stimulated with high-energy electrical pulses
Figure 2. Sketch of electromagnetic shock wave generation with a high-voltage electrical

current passing across a spark-gap electrode system that is located within a water-filled
container.
Figure 3. Principle of self-focussing piezoelectric shock wave generation.
(Fig. 3). The dome-shaped arrangement of elements in a water-filled container leads

to a self-focussing shock wave.
Electromagnetic shock wave generators are based on an electromagnetic coil, po-
sitioned within a water-filled cylinder. Application of an electrical pulse results in a
magnetic field which induces an opposing current in the adjacent metallic membrane,
causing repulsion and pressure pulse radiation [16–18]. The membrane motions, due
to nonlinearities in the wave propagation within the overlying water bath, generate
shaped pressure waves. These waves are focused by either an acoustic lens (Fig. 4)
or by a cylindrical reflector.
Electromagnetic generators are in favour because of their robustness, durability,
reproducibility of signals, and flexibility in the choice of pulse parameters. The lens
may be avoided by a self-focussing spherical shape of the coil [19] as sketched in
Fig. 5. The steepening of the shock waves and the pressure profile at a series of
distances from the self-focussing electromagnetic generator is shown in Fig. 6 [20].
Figure 4. Electromagnetic shock wave generation using a magnetic coil to drive a metallic
membrane and an acoustic lens to focus the resulting waves.
Figure 5. Self-focussing electromagnetic shock wave generation with the aid of a concavely
shaped coil and membrane.
The signals have been measured with a fibre-optic probe hydrophone that basically
determines optically the change in the density of the material as the pressure wave
passes [21]. As revealed by the signal traces in Fig. 6, a positive pressure pulse is
followed by a tensile wave. Such a profile is characteristic to almost all lithotripters.
In the focus the peak amplitude of the positive pressure may vary from 10 to 120 MPa.
The rise time of the shock front is in the range of nanoseconds [17,18]. The duration
of the positive pressure pulse amounts to some microseconds. The amplitude of
the negative pulse may reach 10 MPa. Spectral analysis of the pulses yields broad
frequency bands with their centre frequencies in the range from 200 to 600 kHz.
3 Accepted stone fragmentation mechanisms
Fragmentation needs tensile stess or strain. The positive part in the pressure profile
of the shock wave (Fig. 6) results in noticeable tensile stress only if it displays signif-
icant variations in space over extensions that are smaller than the stone dimensions.
Pressure gradients, shear stress, as well as tensile stress and strain is then produced
within the renal and urinary calculi, leading to pulverization into the desired smaller
fragments. Pressure gradients are particularly high if the focus diameter of the shock
waves is small as compared to the stone size. A crater-like first fragmentation ero-
sion [22,23], as illustrated by Fig. 7, is therefore often observed with sharply focussed
pressure waves.
Less sharply focussed shock waves with a pulse duration shorter than the travel-
ing time within the stones are transmitted through the material and are reflected
with pressure inversion at the rear face of the stone where the acoustical impedance
changes from the large value of the solid to the smaller one of the aqueous environ-
ment. Stone material is split off [5] by the tensile stress in the reflected wave, as
sketched in Fig. 8. This mechanism is known as Hopkinson effect.
Figure 6. Steepening and focussing of shock wave profiles in dependence of the distance
z from the generator [20]. The signals, produced with a self-focussing electromagnetic
generator, have been recorded with the aid of a fibre-optic probe hydrophone [21].
Figure 7. Scheme of crater-like fragmentation erosion of larger stones by pressure inhomo-

geneities of narrow-focus shock waves (-6-dB width of the focus between 2 and 6 mm).
For both above fragmentation mechanisms, which are related to the positive pres-
sure pulse, no indications for noticeable side effects, such as tissue damage and vessel
injury, exist. The situation is quite different with the action of the negative part of
the shock wave profile. In addition to the direct action on the stones, the negative
pressure causes cavitation in the aqueous environment and also in the liquid enclosed
in microcracks [24] and cleavage interfaces of the calculi (Fig. 9). Strong evidence for
significant contributions of fragmentation by cavitation exist [25].
Cavitation erosion is especially observed at the anterior and posterior side of stones
[22,23]. If, however, cavitation occurs in adjacent tissues or vessels severe damage
may result because, after the low pressure period of some microseconds duration,
cavitation bubbles of some millimetre size are formed within some hundred microsec-
onds (Fig. 10). These bubbles collapse rapidly, producing locally pressures of many
MPa which are accompanied by high temperatures, sonoluminescence and emission
of secondary shock waves [26]. Cells are ruptured upon bubble collapse [27].
Figure 8. Principle of spalling by tensile stress in the reflected wave within the stone
(Hopkinson effect).
4 Cleavage by squeezing
Crater-like stone erosions, spalling of material by tensile stress within the stone, in
particular the Hopkinson effect, and cavitation are considered for a long time the
dominating causes of fragmentation. Each of the mechanisms has been observed un-
der certain conditions. The relative importance of either of the mechanisms, however,
is still unclear presently. More recently it has been shown both, experimentally and
theoretically [10], that binary fragmentation by quasistatic squeezing is most efficient
in ESWL. Squeezing leading to stone cleavage involves shock wave focus diameters
Figure 9. Erosion by cavitation at the surface of the stone.
comparable to or larger than the stone diameter. Fragmentation studies on artificial

stones, using a self-focussing electromagnetic shock wave generator (Fig. 5) yielded
cleavage in planes parallel to the wave vector, in experiments with positive pulse-
pressure amplitudes of 20 MPa, and in planes perpendicular to the wave vector, in
experiments with lower pressure (10 MPa). These observations are strikingly repro-
ducible and are in conformity with results from other authors [24,25,28]. They are
also in accordance with a squeezing model [29] as sketched in Fig. 11. The model
proceeds from the part of the pressure wave that propagates outside the stone and
that exerts a circular pressure to cause a compression zone inside the stone. The
zone propagates with the sound velocity of the surrounding aqueous liquid which
is distinctly smaller than the propagation velocities of the elastic waves within the
stone. Corresponding with the pulse width in the aqueous liquid, the width of the
resulting inhomogeneous pressure region amounts to 1 to 3 mm and causes tensile
stress in the adjoining nonpressurised stone areas.
In the case for which the squeezing situation is depicted in Fig. 11 the situation
of wave position at the centre plane of the originally globular stone is given. In
Fig. 12 the first cleavage parallel to the direction of wave propagation is shown for an
artificial stone of 15 mm diameter that had been exposed to seven shock wave pulses
Figure 10. Cavitation bubble and its potential effects on tissue.

Figure 11. Orientations of cleavage planes resulting from circumferential compression

(squeezing) of an originally globular stone. Within the stone the resulting strain is parallel
to the direction of wave propagation. At the anterior and posterior surfaces, respectively,
the resuling strain is perpendicular to that direction.
of 32.5 MPa positive amplitude, a pulse duration of 1.5 µs, and 17 mm focal diameter
according to the -6 dB criterion. Fig. 13 presents the first cleavage of a similar stone
in which an increased pulse pressure of 37 MPa resulted in three cleavage surfaces.
With further increase of pulse pressure up to five first cleavage planes parallel to the
wave vector have been observed [10].
Here we are interested in lower pressure amplitudes rather than in an immediate
fragmentation into particles of 2 mm diameter or even smaller sizes. Such small
fragments, that are able to pass the ureter without difficulty, are obtained from a
larger number of shock wave pulses. In Fig. 14 the development of fragmentation is
shown for four individual artificial stones of 15 mm diameter at varying number of
pulses. The positive pressure amplitude was 25 MPa throughout, the pulse width was
1 µs and the -6-dB focal diameter was 22 mm. The series of experiments indicates
an increasing number of smaller fragments with fairly narrow size distribution as
the number of pulses is increased. This result is in nice accordance with a binary
fragmentation mechanism [29] of large focus ESWL.
A quantitative model of the cleaving process has been developed to verify binary
fragmentation by quasistatic squeezing [10]. In principle, cleaving can be described
by nucleation, growth, and coalescence [12,31] of microflaws or microcracks under the
repeated action of strain pulses (Fig. 15). The process proceeds until a complete crack
or fragmentation interface is generated. Preexisting microflaws in kidney stones, as
in many composite materials, act as nuclei for the growth of microcracks [32]. At
repeated application of pressure pulses, with amplitudes just above the breaking
threshold, microcracks grow and, after a number of pulses, coalesce to larger fissures.
This coalescence leads to disintegration of the stone into two parts. When applying
pressure shock waves of comparatively low amplitudes, coalescence of growing mi-
crocracks is caused by mechanical interaction and is controlled by stronger growth
of microcracks in one single plane perpendicular to the strain direction.
Figure 12. First cleavage parallel to the direction of wave propagation: artificial stone
supplied by High Medical Technologies A.G., Switzerland; stone diameter 15 mm; 7 shock
wave exposures at 32.5 MPa positive pressure amplitude, 1.5 µs pulse duration, and 17 mm
focal diameter, according to the -6-dB criterion, observed parallel to the direction of wave
propagation.
Figure 13. First cleavage of a 15 mm diameter stone as in Fig. 12 but in three cleavage sur-
faces. The positive pulse pressure amplitude was 37 MPa in the experiment. The direction
of wave propagation was perpendicular to the figure plane.
Figure 14. Results of fragmentation experiments with 15 mm diameter artificial stone as in

Figs. 12 and 13, shown for different number of shock wave exposures. From left to right the
figure shows first the original stone and then fragmentation after 7, 60, 120, and 500 pulses.
In these experiments shock waves with positive pulse pressure of 25 MPa, pulse duration of
1 µs, and -6-dB focal diameter of 22 mm were applied. Each fragmentation result has been
obtained with an extra stone. The particle size after 500 pulses was smaller than 2 mm.
The theoretical description proceeds from the observed cleavage orientations which
suggest the positive part of the pressure pulse to act on the stone and its fragments
by quasistatic squeezing as outlined above. It is additionally presumed that the
inhomogeneous strain distribution (Fig. 11) inside the stone and the fragments does
not significantly change until the lower limit of the clinically relevant size of 2 mm is
reached. Equivalence of the quasistatic squeezing energy for fragmentation and the
surface generation energy leads to the following expression for the number m of steps
for binary fragmentation to end up with fragments of diameter dm :
m = 3 ln(d0 /dm )/ ln(2) , (1)
Figure 15. Scematic representation of the growth of microcracks at the repeated action of
strain pulses and the resulting coalescence to a macroscopic fissure.
Figure 16. Ratio of the number of pulses for a 2 mm size fragmentation to that for the first
cleavage displayed as a fuction of stone diameter. Figure symbols show experimemtal results
for artificial stones with errors referring to measurements of 12 stones of 5 mm diameter,
10 stones of 12 mm diameter, and 7 stones of 15 mm diameter. The full line represents the
theoretical relation as predicted by the quasielastic squeezing model [10]. Assuming binary
fragmentation by a Hopkinson mechanism (Fig. 8) the dependence indicated by the dashed
line follows.
where d0 denotes the diameter of the original stone. In deriving this relation it has
been assumed that binary fragmentation on average results in fragment volumes half
the original particle volume and that the fragments can be simply considered globular
particles with reduced radius. The fragmentation ratio, defined as the number of
shock wave pulses needed for the production of particles with diameter dm , divided
by the number of pulses for the first cleavage, is then given by the relation [10]
Ndm 21/3 d0 /dm − 1

= . (2)
N1/2 21/3 − 1
For a final particle diameter dm = 2 mm Fig. 16 shows the fragmentation ratio as
a function of d0 . The full line represents the theoretical predictions based on the
assumption of a squeezing mechanism (Eq. 2).
Experimental data for three sizes of artificial stones nicely agree with theory, thus
confirming the idea of binary fragmentation due to quasistatic squeezing. Obviously,
crater-like stone erosion, cavitation, and spalling of material by tensile stress within
the stone are of minor importance at small pressure amplitudes. For the latter
effect the theoretical dependence (Eq. 1) is shown for comparison by the dashed line
in Fig. 16. It predicts a significantly smaller fragmentation ratio at a given stone
diameter.
5 Clinical results with wide-focus low-pressure lithotripter
The above results show that binary fragmentation by squeezing is a very efficient
mechanism for kidney stone disintegration. Consequently, wide-focus and low-pressure
extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy appears to be in favour when compared to con-
ventional treatment using sharply focused pulses. The requirements in the aperture
and in the placement of the generator are much lower and, in addition, the reliability
to hit the stones and their fragments is considerably higher when applying wide focus
waves. Most important for clinical use is the option of relatively low positive pres-
sure and, consequently, of negative pressure amplitudes smaller than 5 MPa. Adverse
reactions, such as tissue damage and pain can be avoided thereby. A short rise time
of shock wave pulsesappears to be less important in applications, whereas the pulse
width can be increased to a duration of 2 µs.
The conception of using an increased focus and a reduced pressure was the basis
of a clincal study which has been performed in a scientific cooperation between the
University of Stuttgart, the Xixin Medical Instruments Co. Ltd., and seven hospitals
in China [13]. In these first studies into the reliability of the method, about three
hundred patients have been treated using a lithotripter as shown in Fig. 1, equipped
with the self-focussing wide-focus electromagnetic shock wave generator from the
University of Stuttgart [10]. Its apperture is 120 mm and its distance of the geomet-
rical focus is adjusted at 200 mm. At pressure amplitudes between 10 and 25 MPa in
the positive pulse range, the -6-dB focal width is 1.8 µs as determined at the focus
with 10 MPa positive pulse pressure. When the pressure is increased to 27.5 MPa,
the -6-dB pulse duration is reduced to 1 µs in the focus. Laterally displaced from the
focus, however, the -6-dB pulse length is still 1.8 µs. Figure 17 shows an example
of a pressure pulse at the geometrical focus and also in the focal plane but 9 mm
off axis. The pressure amplitudes depend on the generator voltage. In Table 1 the
positive and negative focal peak pressure values of the generator are displayed for
some generator volages. The pulse repitition rate of the generator can be adjusted
in the range from 0.3 s−1 to 2 s−1 .
A detailed protocol has been kept for each patient during treatment. It involved
fifty items, most of them in correspondence with a former clinical ESWL study [33],
but with additional details for pain. For stone disease diagnosis as well as for stone
position and for the determination of the stone size X-rays have been used through-
out. The stone-free rate was checked in part by X-rays but mostly by sonography
U (kV) P + (MPa) P − (MPa)

8 11.6 -4.0
9 17.7 -4.6
10 26.1 -5.6
11 31.3 -6.4
12 33.8 -7.2
Table 1. Positive (P + ) and negative (P − ) focal peak pressures of the self-focussing elec-
tromagnetic shock wave generator at some generator voltages U .
Figure 17. Shock wave pulse with positive pressure amplitude of 27.5 MPa and maximum
negative presure of -6 MPa, measured with fibre-optic probe hydrophone [21] at the geomet-
rical focus (a) and in the focal plane but 9 mm off axis (b). Corresponding with the -6-dB
focal width of the pulse, the pulse pressure outside the axis is reduced to one half, but the
pulse duration is close to 1.8 µs in both cases. In (b) the shock wave front has not yet
developed.
after a follow-up of one week, one month, and also three months. The study included
297 patients and altogether 398 stones of which 41.6 % were smaller than 1 cm in
diameter and 3.2 % were larger than 2 cm. About 32 % of the stones were located in
the calyx, 30 % in the lower ureter , and 21.5 % in the upper ureter. The remaining
parts were distributed across the pelvis (7 %), the middle ureter (5.5 %), and the
bladder (4 %). The treatment time per session was 77 min during which the patient
was exposed to a mean of 1532 shock waves with 20.8 MPa pulse pressure. The most
important results of the study are summarized in Table 2 where comparison is made
with clinical results obtained with narrow-focus lithotripters.
The finding that wide-focus lithotripsy required the remarkably small number of
1532 shock waves per session attracts attention, in particular as an acceptable part
of only 33 % patients needed repeated ESWL and as the number of 1.39 sessions
per patient was pretty small. There was no standardisation treatment procedure,
but, typically, after a start with lower pressures the pulse amplitude was increased
to an upper limit between 15 and 25 MPa. As a rule one thousand shock wave
pulses have been applied in one session. With respect to the number of patients, as
well as the number, the size distribution, and the location of stones the wide-focus
low-pressure lithotripsy study resembles a previous study by Rassweiler et al. [33]

in which two narrow-focus lihotripters had been used (Table 2). Quite remarkably,
in that treatment the average shock wave number was 3288 and 3457, respectively,
thus more than twice the number needed with low-pressure ESWL. Additionally, the
agreeable small pulse pressure of only 20.8 MPa, as a mean, applied in the wide-focus
study underlines the high efficiacy of binary stone fragmentation by squeezing.
The stone-free rate of 86.3 % after three months for the treatment in all seven
Chinese hospitals compares with 68 % and 70 %, respectively, in the narrow-focus
lithotripsy study [33]. The figures are even more in favour of wide-focus ESWL if only
the 176 patients are considered who were treated in four selected hospitals out of all
seven. Just an average of 1331 shock-wave pulses was applied, with a requirement
of repeated ESWL for just 22 % of the patients and a mean number of 1.24 sessions
per patient. The stone-free rate was as high as 97.7 % after three months follow-up
(Table 2).
The treatment time of 77 min is longer than reported for the narrow-focus litho-
tripters. This longer treatment time is due to the large time intervals of 3 s chosen
between succeeding pressure pulses. Residual bubbles after cavitation are allowed to
become progressively resorbed thereby, as has been observed by sonography. These
measures reduce the contributions of bubbles to repeated cavitation events at the next
pressure pulse. In the first clinical study of wide-focus low-pressure ESWL the large
time interval setting aimed at a reduction of pain, traumatisation and uneasiness of
the patients to the largest possible extent. In principle, the pulse repetition time can
be reduced to 0.5 s.
In contrast to the narrow-focus lithotripsy study [33], for which 80 % and 77 %,
respectively, of IV analgesida/sedation and 6 % general anaesthesia were reported,
analgossedation was required only with 1 % of the patients treated with wide-focus
ESWL (Table 2). No auxiliary measures were necessary, as compared to 38 % and
42 %, respectively, of invasive measures with conventional ESWL. Severe complica-
tions, such as the perirenal haematoma, were not reported, compared with 1.4 and
2.3 per cent of patients treated with narrow-focus lithotripsy. These results again
reveal the favourable attributes of wide-focus ESWL treatment utilizing stone frag-
mentation by quasistatic squeezing.
Feature Modulith SL 20 Lithostar Plus Wide-Focus Low-Pressure
Number of Patients 287 258 297 (176)

Number of Sessions 3288 3457 1532 (1331)
IV Analgosedation, % 80 77 1 (1)
Auxiliary Measures, % 38 42 0 (0)
Severe Complications, % 1.4 2.3 0 (0)
Stone-free Rate, % 68 70 86.2 (97.7)
Table 2. Comparison of clinical results obtained with narrow-focus lithotripters “Modulith

SL20” and “Lithostar Plus” [33] as well as with the Xixin wide-focus low-pressure instru-
ment. Figures in parentheses refer to four selected ones out of altogether seven hospitals.
The stone-free rate refers to a three-months follow-up.
6 Conclusions
Based on predominant fragmentation by sqeezing, wide-focus and low-pressure ex-

tracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy has the potential of high fragmentation efficiency.
A significantly reduced shock wave number is required at agreeably low pressure am-
plitude. At the comparatively small negative pressure range of -5 MPa and the low
pulse repetition rate of 0.33 s−1 , adverse effects of cavitation are less strong and do
not cause severe pain. In accordance with the reduction of cavitation, as compared
to conventional ESWL, only minor complications have been observed in the clinical
study comprising 297 patients. Petechia and pain at the skin can be largely avoided
by careful bubble-free application of the ultrasound coupling gel [10]. Missing ev-
idence of perirenal haematoma is again in accordance with the moderate negative
pressure and the thus reduced effects of cavitation. As fragmentation with wide fo-
cus results in a more homogeneous and narrow fragment-particle size distribution,
auxiliary measures are necessary neither before nor after the shock wave applications.
An acceptable side effect of using a wide focus is the lower precision that is required
in the localisation of stones. It is less difficult to hit the stone and its fragments during
treatment. Despite of being compacted under prestress of the ureter and/or bladder
entrance, middle and lower ureter stones can be easily fragmented. Also bladder
stones of sizes larger than 3 cm in diameter can be sucessfully treated, provided the
bladder is sufficiently filled with liquid.
Due to the many advantages offered by the wide-focus low-pressure shock-wave
lithotripter, the Xixin instrument, equipped with the self-focussing electromagnetic
shock wave generator of the University of Stuttgart, was given clinical approval in
China.
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Copyright notice:
Figures 1 to 12 and Fig. 15 reused with permission from Ref. [14]; Figures 13 and 14 reused
from Ref. [10], Copyright 2001 World Federation of Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology;
Figure 17 reused from Ref. [13], Copyright 2002 World Federation of Ultrasound in Medicine
& Biology.
Phase transitions, material ejection, and

plume dynamics in pulsed laser ablation
of soft biological tissues
Alfred Vogel1 , Ingo Apitz1 , and Vasan Venugopalan2
1
Institut für Biomedizinische Optik, Universität Lübeck
Peter-Monnik-Weg 4, D-23562 Lübeck, Germany
2
Dept. of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and
Laser Microbeam and Medical Program, Beckman Laser Institute
University of California, Irvine, California 92697, USA
1 Introduction
After the invention of the pulsed ruby laser by Maiman in 1960 it was anticipated that
lasers would enable the cutting and removal of biological tissue with unprecedented
precision and selectivity [1]. However, even though pulsed lasers were used within a
few years for intraocular tissue coagulation, a clinically viable application of pulsed
laser ablation was not reported until the early 1970’s. It would take until the 1980’s
for lasers to be routinely used for ophthalmic dissection and ablation procedures [2,3].
In other medical sub-specialties routine laser use did not begin until the mid 1980’s.
The delay between the invention of the laser and its successful clinical application
was largely due to a lack of understanding of the fundamental mechanisms that
govern laser–tissue interactions. Now, as we approach the 50th anniversary of the
invention of the laser, the understanding of laser–tissue interactions has matured
and procedures that employ pulsed laser radiation are not only present in nearly
every medical sub-specialty but also in various biological fields.
In the 1990’s, two books on laser–tissue interactions became available and serve
as a valuable resource for the field [4,5]. However, a comprehensive review of the
fundamental mechanisms involved in pulsed laser ablation of tissue appeared only
very recently when Vogel and Venugopalan [6] presented a conceptual framework
providing mechanistic links between various ablation applications and the underlying
thermodynamic and phase change processes. The present article summarizes key
elements of this analysis, with focus on the kinetics of rapid phase transitions in
aqueous media and their modifications by the presence of a tissue matrix. The results
obtained are then used to analyse the mechanisms of material ejection in pulsed
laser tissue ablation and their consequences for ablation efficiency, precision, and
collateral damage. Description of the ablation plume dynamics will be an essential
part of this analysis because the composition of the plume reflects the kinetics of
218 A. Vogel, I. Apitz, V. Venugopalan
Figure 1. Transmission electron micrograph of human skin (dermis) showing collagen fibres
sectioned both longitudinally and transversely. Magnification 4900×. The fibres consist of in-
dividual fibrils that are embedded in a ground substance with high water content (Reprinted
with permission from Ref. [8]. Copyright 1988 Blackwell Science).
the initial phase transitions, and its rapid movement produces a recoil pressure that
may result in secondary material ejection. We will confine the presentation to pulsed
ablation at tissue surfaces that does not involve plasma formation. Ablation processes
within transparent tissues or within cells that involve nonlinear absorption have been
considered in recent reviews [6,7].
2 Tissue composition, and properties relevant for ablation
Soft biological tissues consist of cells that reside in and attach to an extracellular
matrix (ECM). By mass, the composition of most soft tissues is dominated by water
(55-99%) and collagen (0-35%). In “cell-continuous” tissue such as liver and epithe-
lia, the ECM fraction is quite small and consists mostly of cell adhesion proteins. By
contrast, “matrix-continuous tissues” that include the corneal stroma, dermis, carti-
lage, and tendon have a very small cellular fraction and are almost entirely ECM. In
matrix-continuous tissues (see Fig. 1), the ECM consists largely of collagen, with the
collagen content being as high as 35% [6,9]. A primary ECM function is the mainte-
nance of the tissue’s structural integrity. As a result, the ECM inhibits both tissue
vaporization and material removal that represent the desired outcomes of ablation
processes.
In general, the optical absorption properties of tissue are dominated by the ab-
sorption of proteins, DNA, melanin, hemoglobin, and water. The absorption spectra
of these tissue constituents are presented in Fig. 2. In non-turbid samples, optical
Dynamics of pulsed laser tissue ablation 219
Figure 2. Optical absorption coefficients of principal tissue chromophores in the 0.1–12 µm

spectral region. (Reprinted with permission from Ref. [6]. Copyright 2003 American Chem-
ical Society)
transmission T is governed by Beer-Lambert’s law according to:

Φ
T = = exp(−µa l) , (1)
Φ0 (1 − Rs )
where Rs is the specular reflection of the sample and Φ is the radiant exposure
transmitted after travel through an optical path length l in a sample with absorption
coefficient µa [cm−1 ]. In the absence of scattering, the reciprocal of the absorption
coefficient (1/µa ) defines the optical penetration depth δ and thus the characteristic
depth of laser energy deposition.
For most laser wavelengths used only a single tissue constituent (e. g., water or
collagen) absorbs the radiation. Therefore the spatial scales that characterize the
distribution of these constituents are vital to understanding the potential energy
transfer mechanisms between tissue constituents. The vast majority of tissue water
resides in cells and in the ground substance of the ECM in which the collagen fibrils
are embedded [6,10], and the spatial scale characterizing domains with different ab-
sorption properties is given by the diameter and spacing of the collagen fibrils. The
fibril diameter is ≈ 30 nm in cornea and varies between 20 nm and 120 nm in dermis.
The centre-to-centre spacing is very regular (≈ 65 nm) in the transparent cornea and
exhibits more variations in other tissues [6,9].
Optical scattering arises from spatial variations in refractive index within tissue
that are particularly strong between collagen fibrils and ground substance. Typical
reduced scattering coefficients for tissues in the green are on the order of µ0s = 10–
40 cm−1 [11]. The wavelength dependence of the reduced scattering coefficient µ0s is
well characterized by the scaling law µ0s ∼ λ−b where b ∼ 0.5–2 [12,13]. Optical scat-
tering will reduce the optical penetration depth δ of light relative to the absorption
depth (1/µa ). In addition, when scattering is dominant over absorption, backscatter-
ing and total internal reflection lead to a fluence rate proximal to the tissue surface
that can exceed by several times the incident irradiance [14,15]. However, ablation is
typically performed at wavelengths where µa µ0s .
The thermal and mechanical transients generated during the pulsed laser ablation
process are substantial and can result in dynamic changes of the optical absorption
properties. Motivated by spectroscopy literature indicating that the absorption peak
of water at λ = 2.94 µm drops and shifts towards shorter wavelengths for increasing
temperature [18], various researchers investigated the reduction in the IR absorption
coefficient of tissue when heated [16,19,20]. In Fig. 3 we present data for the depen-
dence of the absorption coefficient of water on volumetric energy ε for λ = 2.94
and 2.79 µm [16,17], and of the variation in optical penetration depth with incident
radiant exposure [6]. The latter results, shown in the bottom of Fig. 3, demonstrate
that for Φ0 > 0.5 J/cm2 , Er:YSGG laser radiation (λ = 2.79 µm) offers better spatial
confinement of the laser energy compared to Er:YAG laser radiation (λ = 2.94 µm).
This is opposite to the behaviour one would expect from the absorption coefficients
measured at small radiant exposures (Fig. 2). Variations in optical absorption with
temperature are also important for ultraviolet laser ablation. Staveteig and Walsh [21]
hypothesized that absorption of UV radiation by peptide bonds is followed by heat-
ing of the surrounding water that results in a change in hydrogen bonding structure
of water and thus to a red shift of the water absorption band, which at room tem-
perature is located at 160 nm. They demonstrated that the absorption of water at
λ = 193 nm may be raised to as much as µa ≈ 104 cm−1 at ε = 2 kJ/cm3 .
Phase transitions of the tissue water are strongly influenced by the mechanical
tissue properties. There is a positive correlation between tissue strength and collagen
content. Tissues that represent extremes of mechanical strength are the liver and
tendon. Liver is a cell-continuous tissue with little ECM and collagen content, which
results in a very low ultimate tensile strength (UTS) of 23 kPa and moderate exten-
sibility at fracture ∼ 50% [9,22]. Tendon is a matrix-continuous tissue that possesses
high collagen content. This provides for high strength and stiffness with an UTS
of & 100 MPa and fracture extensibility of ∼ 10%. Skin has similarly high collagen
content (25–33%) but lower UTS (∼ 10 MPa) and much larger fracture extensibility
of ∼ 30–100% because the collagen fibrils in the dermis are “wavy” and form a loose
three-dimensional network [9] (see Fig. 1).
Nearly all tissue mechanical data have been acquired under “quasi-static” load-
ing conditions in which the tissue is deformed at very slow strain rates; typically
on the order of 10−3 s−1 . However, the processes involved in pulsed laser ablation
of tissue produce extremely high strain rates; on the order of 105 –107 s−1 . Studies
performed to examine the effect of strain rate in the range 0.3–170 s−1 have revealed
that while the tissue strain at fracture remains roughly constant, the UTS increases
in proportion to the logarithm of the strain rate [23–25]. The increase in UTS is
due to the viscous dissipation between the collagen fibrils and the adjacent ground
substance during the rapid deformation. It is not known whether the logarithmic
dependence between strain rate and tissue UTS remains valid at the extreme strain
Figure 3. Graphs illustrating the effects of dynamic optical properties of a water target
produced by Er:YAG (λ = 2.94 µm) and Er:YSGG (λ = 2.79 µm) laser irradiation; top:
variation of optical absorption coefficient of water with volumetric energy density. Data
compiled from Refs. [16] and [17]; bottom: variation of optical penetration depth with in-
cident radiant exposure. Optical penetration depth is defined as the location at which the
volumetric energy density drops to 1/e of the surface value. Note that for incident radi-
ant exposures F0 > 0.4 J/cm2 , Er:YSGG laser irradiation offers more superficial energy
deposition compared to Er:YAG laser irradiation.
rates produced by pulsed laser ablation. However, the available UTS data suggest
that the tissue strength under ablative conditions can be considerably higher than
that measured under “quasi-static” loading conditions.

Thermal denaturation of collagen fibrils can affect the dynamics of the ablation
process. It begins when the thermal energy of the constituent molecules overcomes
the weak hydrogen bonds and van der Waals interactions stabilizing the helical con-
figuration of the α-chains in the collagen molecule [26]. The “native” triple-helical
structure of the molecule is thus transformed into a “denatured” random coil struc-
ture that is associated with a loss of the banding pattern of the native collagen
fibrils in TEM [27] and with shrinkage of the fibrils along their longitudinal axis [28].
However, when the collagen is embedded in tissue, shrinkage is impaired and tensile
stress is developed along the fibrils due to the covalent cross-links that connect the
molecules and maintain the organization of the fibrils [29,30]. Further heating de-
natures first the thermally-labile and then the thermally-stable covalent cross-links
between the collagen molecules. This results in a stepwise disintegration of the col-
lagen fibrils [31], a relaxation of the stresses developed during shrinkage [29,30], and
finally in total mechanical failure of the fibrillar tissue structure that now appears
homogeneous in TEM [26,27]. Older tissues possess a higher density of cross-links
and thus require higher temperatures to undergo these transitions [28,32].
Thermal denaturation is a rate process and thus depends on both the magnitude
and duration of thermal exposure [33,34]. If the heating time is reduced, considerably
higher temperatures are required for denaturation. While the mechanical stability of
collagen is destroyed at about 75◦ C when heated for several minutes [29], tempera-
tures far in excess of 100◦ C are required to affect mechanical stability for thermal
exposures in the nanosecond to microsecond range characteristic of pulsed laser abla-
tion [35]. Nevertheless, given that surface temperatures approaching 400–750◦ C have
been measured during tissue ablation using laser pulses of 100 µs duration [36], the
mechanical integrity of the tissue ECM will certainly be compromised. In nanosecond
ablation, temperatures in the superficial tissue layer may, even at moderate radiant
exposures, be raised above 1000◦ C at which point the mechanical integrity of the tis-
sue ECM is completely lost due to thermal dissociation of the constituent molecules
into volatile fragments [37] (see Sect. 4.6).
Laser wavelengths especially useful for precise tissue ablation are those that exhibit
very large absorption coefficients (see Fig. 2) such as the radiation of ArF excimer
lasers (λ = 193 nm), Er:YSSG lasers (λ = 2.79 µm), Er:YAG lasers (λ = 2.94 µm),
and CO2 lasers (λ = 10.6 µm). Since these wavelengths cannot well be transmitted
through optical fibres, they are mainly used for ablation at tissue surfaces in air. For
ablation inside the human body, XeCl excimer lasers (λ = 308 nm), thulium:YAG
lasers (λ = 2.0 µm) and holmium:YAG lasers (λ = 2.1 µm) are frequently employed
because their radiation is transmitted by low-OH quartz fibres.
3 Linear thermo-mechanical response to pulsed irradiation
In the absence of photochemical processes, the laser energy absorbed by the tissue is
completely converted to a temperature rise before a phase transition occurs. Under
adiabatic conditions, the temperature rise at a location r is related to the local
volumetric energy density ε(r) by:
ε(r)
∆T (r) = , (2)
ρcv
where ρ is the tissue density and cv the specific heat capacity at constant volume.
The absorbed energy is redistributed by thermal diffusion [38]. In 1983, Anderson
and Parrish [39] introduced the concept that spatially-confined microsurgical effects
can be achieved by using laser pulse durations tp shorter than the characteristic
thermal diffusion time of the heated volume. For laser ablation, the heated volume
is typically a layer with a thickness of the optical penetration depth (1/µa ), and the
characteristic thermal diffusion time td is given as [14]
1
td = , (3)
κµ2a
where κ is the thermal diffusivity. By defining a dimensionless ratio t∗d = (tp /td ), the
thermal confinement condition can be expressed as [40,41]
tp
t∗d = = κµ2a tp . 1 . (4)
td
Short-pulse laser irradiation of tissue not only leads to rapid heating but also
to the generation and propagation of thermoelastic stresses [42]. The magnitude and
temporal structure of these stresses are governed by the longitudinal speed of sound in
the medium ca , the laser pulse duration tp , the depth of the heated volume (1/µa ) and
the Grüneisen coefficient Γ [42,43]. The Grüneisen coefficient is simply the internal
stress per unit energy density generated when depositing energy into a target under
constant volume (i. e., isochoric) conditions. This is given by the thermodynamic
derivative
∂σ β
Γ= = , (5)
∂ε v ρ cv κT
where σ is the internal stress, ε the volumetric energy density, v the specific volume, β
the coefficient of thermal expansion, ρ the mass density, cv the specific heat capacity
at constant volume and κT the isothermal compressibility.
Thermoelastic stresses are most prominent when the laser pulse duration tp is
smaller than the characteristic time required for a stress wave to traverse the heated
volume tm = (1/µa ca ) [14]. This means that the stresses are confined within the
heated region during the laser irradiation. By defining a dimensionless ratio t∗m =
(tp /tm ), the “stress confinement” condition can be expressed as [40,41]
tp
t∗m = = µa ca tp . 1 . (6)
tm
For t∗m 1, heating of the laser-affected volume occurs under isochoric conditions
and the thermoelastic stress is maximal. The peak stress σp is given by [42]
σp = AΓε0 = AΓµa Φ0 , (7)

Figure 4. Variation of the thermoelastic stress prefactor A (see Eq. (7)) with pulse duration
relative to the stress propagation time across the heated volume t∗m . Results are shown for
a rectangular, biexponential, and Gaussian laser pulse shape and derived from the results
of Refs. [42] and [44].
where A = 1 and the duration of the thermoelastic stress transient ta scales with the
stress propagation time and ta ≈ (4–6/µa ca ). When the stress transient leaves the
heated volume, the peak stress drops to 0.5 σp .
In the limit t∗m → ∞, where there is no stress confinement, A → 0 and the duration
of the stress transient approaches that of the laser pulse. The variation of A with t∗m
for different temporal laser pulse shapes is shown in Fig. 4.
While thermal expansion of a heated volume generates compressive thermoelastic
stresses, subsequent propagation of these stresses results in transients that contain
both compressive and tensile components. Tensile stresses arise from the reflection
of the compressive stress waves at a boundary to a medium with lower acoustic
impedance (tissue–air, tissue–water) or from the three-dimensional characteristics
of acoustic wave propagation from a heated tissue volume of finite size [7,43,45–48].
Tensile stress wave generation originating from acoustic impedance mismatch at a
tissue surface is shown in Fig. 5.
4 Thermodynamics and kinetics of phase transitions
All ablation processes involve the fracture of chemical bonds and lead to the removal
of single molecules, molecular fragments, and molecular clusters. Bond fracture can
also produce the formation of voids (i. e., bubbles or cracks) that facilitate the ejection
of non-decomposed material fragments upon mechanical failure of the target. Vapor-
ization, molecular fragmentation, and void formation can all be viewed as phase
transitions that are accomplished via photothermal, photomechanical, and/or pho-
Figure 5. (a) Development of a thermoelastic stress wave in water calculated for F0 =

2 J/cm2 ; µa = 200 cm−1 and tp = 8 ns. (b) Pressure as a function of time at a depth of
50 µm. (Reprinted with permission from Ref. [45]. Copyright 1996 Springer).
tochemical mechanisms. In this article, we focus on the kinetics of phase transitions

in purely photothermal ablation processes such as in IR ablation. When UV lasers
are used, photochemical bond dissociation may contribute to ablation. For a detailed
discussion of the role of these photochemical processes, the reader is referred to a
recent review by two of the authors [6].
4.1 Phase diagrams
We use the pressure vs. temperature projection of the phase diagram for liquid and
gaseous water (Fig. 6) and the pressure vs. specific volume projection of the thermo-
dynamic phase diagram (Fig. 7) to discuss the thermodynamics of phase transitions.
The solid curve A–C on Fig. 6 represents those pressure/temperature pairs where
liquid and gaseous water are in equilibrium with each other and is known as the
“binodal”. The curve B–C–D, the “spinodal”, denotes a locus of states with infinite
Figure 6. Pressure vs. temperature projection of the thermodynamic phase diagram includ-
ing the spinodal curve. Specific states of interest are (1) ambient temperature and pressure,
(2) boiling temperature under ambient conditions, (3) spinodal temperature at ambient
pressure, (4) saturated conditions corresponding to the ambient spinodal temperature. The
importance of points 40 and 5 are discussed in Sect. 5.4.
compressibility representing the intrinsic stability limit of the liquid or vapour phase
[(∂T /∂s)p = 0 and (∂p/∂v)T = 0]. At the spinodal, the superheated liquid phase
(B–C) or subcooled vapour (C–D) phase is no longer stable with respect to the ran-
dom density fluctuations that are present in all materials at non-zero temperatures.
The region between segment A–C of the binodal and B–C of the spinodal represents
metastable states of the superheated liquid for which the presence of a free surface
or bubble nucleus is required for vaporization. The binodal and spinodal curves in-
tersect at the critical point C above which no thermodynamic distinction can be
made between liquid and vapour phases. For water, the critical point is located at
Tc = 374.14 ◦ C and pc = 22.09 MPa.
Liquid, vapour, and mixed phase regions are clearly demarcated in the p–v diagram
of Fig. 7. The binodal encompasses the mixed phase region that specifies the range
of specific volumes in which liquid and gaseous phases coexist for a given pressure
and temperature. The dashed curve provides the spinodal where the segment B–C
represents the stability limit of superheated liquid and segment C–D represents the
stability limit of subcooled vapour.
Figure 7. Pressure vs. specific volume projection of the thermodynamic phase diagram
including the spinodal curve and equilibrium and van der Waals isotherms. Points 1–4
correspond to those shown in Fig. 11. The importance of points 40 , 5, 50 and the isoenthalp
is discussed in Sect. 5.4.
4.2 Surface vaporization

Equilibrium vaporization at a liquid–vapour interface is associated with an increase of
specific volume at constant temperature that requires the latent heat of vaporization.
This process can occur at any single location along the binodal in the p–T diagram
of Fig. 6. In the p–v diagram in Fig. 7, surface vaporization is represented by a path
following an equilibrium isotherm that connects a state of saturated liquid with a
state of saturated vapour. Thus vaporization does not occur at a pre-determined tem-
perature and theoretical models that adopt a fixed “vaporization temperature” [49]
violate the basic physics of the process [50]. The actual surface temperature is dic-
tated by the rate of equilibrium vaporization that balances the irradiance supplied
to the system.
However, during laser ablation, rates of vapour formation in excess of that predicted
by equilibrium vaporization are often achieved. This occurs because the increased
equilibrium vapour pressure corresponding to the increased temperature of the liquid
surface is not established instantaneously. This results in an increased mass flux of
vapour transported into the surroundings known as non-equilibrium interphase mass
transfer and can be estimated using arguments from the kinetic theory of gases [51,52].
Nevertheless, even this increased non-equilibrium interphase mass transfer provides
a very small ablation rate. Efficient ablation is achieved at laser irradiances that
deposit energy at a rate that cannot be balanced by surface vaporization processes
alone. This results in material removal via volumetric processes.
4.3 Normal boiling

Normal boiling refers to a volumetric process that forms vapour at a thermodynamic
state on the binodal as indicated by point 2 in Fig. 6. Thus, for a given pressure, the
binodal defines the corresponding “boiling temperature”. For water at atmospheric
pressure this temperature is 100◦ C. However for ablation processes with a high rate
of mass removal, the boiling temperature is increased significantly because the recoil
produces an increase in pressure both at the target surface and within its bulk.
Vapour formation in normal boiling relies on the presence of pre-existing nuclei
of vapour or dissolved gas within the liquid to catalyze the nucleation and growth
of vapour bubbles. The transition from saturated liquid to saturated vapour occurs
within a finite layer of mixed phase. The thickness of this “vapour–liquid” layer
is comparable to the optical penetration depth of the incident radiation and its
composition varies from that of saturated liquid at its base to saturated vapour
at the target surface [50,53]. As a result, the surface temperature is fixed at the
saturation conditions corresponding to the pressure at the target surface and there
is no temperature gradient within the vapour–liquid layer.
It is important to note that once a normal boiling process is established, the pres-
ence of volumetric energy densities corresponding to temperatures slightly higher
than the saturation temperature results in the growth of vapour bubbles. There-
fore normal boiling processes always involve partial vaporization of a liquid volume
through the growth of vapour bubbles. Thus the concept frequently found in biomed-
ical ablation papers that vaporization only occurs once the entire latent heat of va-
porization is deposited is not correct.
Nevertheless, normal boiling plays a negligible role for pulsed laser ablation for
two reasons. First, the density of heterogeneous bubble nucleation sites is likely in-
sufficient to provide a boiling process sufficiently vigorous to balance the high rates
of energy deposition achieved in most pulsed laser ablation processes [41,50]. Second,
the high rates of energy deposition can be balanced only if the bubbles move to the
target surface on a time scale set by the propagation velocity of the ablation front.
Miotello and Kelly [54] showed that this is not possible when irradiating pure water
with nanosecond laser pulses and is possible for microsecond pulses only for radiant
exposures proximal to the ablation threshold. In tissue this is even less likely because
the mobility of vapour bubbles is further inhibited by the presence of the ECM.
4.4 Phase explosion and explosive boiling

When the rate of volumetric energy deposition provided by laser radiation is more
rapid than the rate of energy consumed by vaporization and normal boiling, the
tissue water is driven to a metastable superheated state. The superheated liquid is
metastable until the spinodal temperature is reached. The spinodal limit is defined
by line B–C in Fig. 6 that represents the locus of states with infinite compressibility
[(∂p/∂v)T = 0]. At the spinodal limit, the superheated liquid undergoes “spinodal
decomposition”; a spontaneous process by which a thermodynamically unstable liq-
uid relaxes towards equilibrium by “phase separation” into a mixture of saturated
vapour and saturated liquid [55–57]. The spinodal temperature of water at atmo-
spheric pressure is ≈ 305◦ C with the corresponding equilibrium saturation vapour

pressure of 9.2 MPa. Thus spinodal decomposition under atmospheric conditions in-
volves an impressive pressure rise resulting in the violent emission of saturated liquid
droplets by the expanding vapour.
For the phase diagram shown in Fig. 6, the heating phase corresponds to the path
1 → 3, and the spinodal decomposition will initially result in a nearly isochoric tran-
sition from point 3 on the spinodal to point 40 in the mixed phase region possessing
the same enthalpy. For pure water, the subsequent explosive expansion of this mix-
ture will transition through a series of thermodynamic states that follows the curve
of constant enthalpy (isoenthalp) as shown in Fig. 7 until the mixture reaches atmo-
spheric pressure at point 50 . During the expansion 40 → 50 , the temperature of the
mixture drops to 100◦ C, and about half of the liquid is transformed into vapour. The
vapour fraction (∼ 49.6%) is given by the energy density necessary to heat water
from room temperature to the spinodal limit (1.27 kJ/g) as compared to the sum of
the sensible and latent enthalpy of vaporization. The remaining saturated liquid is
ejected in the form of droplets.
To provide a complete description of the phase transformation process as the liq-
uid is heated to the spinodal limit, one must also consider the potential contribution
of homogeneous nucleation [41,54,58,59]. Homogeneous nucleation refers to the spon-
taneous formation of vapour inclusions within the bulk liquid that arise solely from
thermodynamic fluctuations and is not catalyzed by the presence of impurities or dis-
solved gas. While the formation of such vapour “nuclei” is spontaneous, their growth
is not ensured and depends strongly on superheat temperature.
In classical nucleation theory, the driving force for growth of vapour nuclei is sup-
plied by the difference in chemical potential between the superheated liquid outside
the bubble and the vapour inside the bubble. This driving force is necessary to over-
come the free energy barrier posed by the surface tension separating the vapour from
the liquid [57]. The chemical potential difference between the superheated liquid and
vapour scales with the bubble volume (i. e., r3 ) while the contribution from surface
tension scales with the bubble surface area (i. e., r2 ). As a result, small vapour nuclei
that form due to thermodynamic fluctuations spontaneously collapse while larger
vapour nuclei will grow. The Gibbs free energy ∆G that describes the thermody-
namics of bubble formation is given by:
4πr3
∆G = (µv − µl ) + 4πr2 σ , (8)
3
where µv and µl are the chemical potentials of the vapour and liquid state, respec-
tively, r is the size of the vapour nuclei, and σ is the surface tension of the surround-
ing liquid [57,60]. Nuclei grow if they are larger than a critical radius rcr . Figure 8
shows the dependence of rcr on superheat temperature for water. Note that while rcr
strongly decreases as the superheat temperature increases, it remains finite even at
the spinodal temperature. Thus nucleation remains an activated process with a finite
free energy barrier [55]. The strong reduction of ∆rcr results in a dramatic rise in
the nucleation rate J with temperature that attains a large, but finite, value at the
spinodal temperature as shown in Fig. 9. The energy barrier that must be overcome
for the conversion from the liquid to vapour phase disappears only when surface
Figure 8. Variation of the critical bubble radius required for spontaneous vapour bubble
growth with superheat temperature. Note that the critical bubble radius goes to zero at the
critical temperature.
tension disappears and this occurs at the critical point. To account for the influence
of statistical fluctuations on the stability limit, Kiselev has introduced the concept
of a kinetic spinodal. The kinetic spinodal is defined as the locus of thermodynamic
states where the time for spontaneous formation (driven by superheat temperature)
of vapour nuclei becomes smaller than the characteristic time for their decay to local
equilibrium (driven by surface tension) [61]. The superheat temperatures defined by
the kinetic spinodal are much lower than the critical temperature and slightly lower
than the classical spinodal and represent the physical limits of the metastable liquid
states that can be achieved prior to spinodal decomposition.
Thus, in general, the transformation of superheated (metastable) liquid to an equi-
librium state of mixed phase may involve both bubble nucleation (large density fluc-
tuations extending over a small spatial extent) and spinodal decomposition (small
density fluctuations extending over a large spatial extent). We refer to the collective
phase transition process as a phase explosion. A more detailed consideration of nu-
cleation theory and spinodal decomposition as it relates phase transitions and tissue
ablation can be found in our earlier review [6].
Thus far we have focused on processes tracing a path indicated by 1 → 3 → 40 →
5 → 50 in Figs. 6 and 7. This path corresponds to the extreme case in which no
vapour nuclei are present in the liquid. When the heating occurs very rapidly at
high radiant exposures, the liquid experiences a recoil pressure from surface vapor-
ization/interphase mass transfer that can be substantial due to the non-equilibrium
conditions produced during the beginning of the laser pulse. Thus spinodal condi-
tions are reached at an elevated pressure somewhere between point 3 and the critical
point C. Because the resulting phase explosion occurs at elevated temperature and
Figure 9. Variation of vapour bubble nucleation rate with superheat temperature.
pressure, the pressure jump associated with the phase separation is less severe. The
elevated temperature corresponds to a higher volumetric energy density of the su-
perheated liquid, and therefore more than half of the liquid will be transformed into
vapour during the phase separation process.
When vapour nuclei are present in the liquid and the heating occurs on a time scale
such that a significant fraction of the incident laser energy (but not the entire energy
flux) contributes to the growth of heterogeneous and homogeneous vapour nuclei, the
resulting phase transition process again follows a path that is intermediate between
normal boiling and the path 1 → 3 → 4. Spinodal conditions in the superheated liquid
are again reached at a location between point 3 and the critical point C followed by
phase separation. In this case however, the pressure rise is due to vapour formation
at the nucleating centres rather than recoil from vapour leaving the target surface.
Such intermediate processes are termed “explosive boiling”. In general, the energy
necessary to reach spinodal conditions is higher for explosive boiling than for the
case of phase explosion with surface vaporization. The amount of vapour formation
is greater due to contributions from both the growing nucleation centres and the
phase separation.
Both phase explosion and explosive boiling are volumetric processes in which a
portion of the target material is ejected in the liquid phase and the latent heat of
vaporization is not supplied to the entire ablated mass. As a result, the ablation
efficiency (mass removed by a given amount of laser energy) is higher for these pro-
cesses as compared to surface vaporization and normal boiling where all material is
removed in the vapour phase.
Figure 10. Path taken through the p vs. T projection of the thermodynamic phase diagram
for confined boiling (1 → 2 → 4 → 6) and for tissue ablation involving a phase explosion
(1 → 2 → 3 → 40 → 5 → 6). The actual path followed depends on the rate of energy
deposition, number density of heterogeneous nuclei, and the mechanical strength of the tissue
matrix relative to the saturation vapour pressure corresponding to the ambient spinodal
temperature.
4.5 Effects of the tissue ECM on the phase transitions

In pulsed laser ablation of tissues, the phase transition processes are affected by the
presence of the ECM. For boiling processes within tissue, the vapour pressure nec-
essary to drive bubble growth must not only overcome surface tension but also the
elastic restoring forces provided by the tissue matrix [62]. Therefore, bubble growth
in tissue requires a higher internal pressure than in pure liquids, and the elevated
pressure is coupled to an increase in the boiling (saturation) temperature. The pres-
sure increase that develops during the boiling process continues until it exceeds the
ultimate tensile strength of the ECM and results in explosive tissue ablation [62]. We
term this process “confined boiling”. On the p–T phase diagram in Fig. 10, the con-
fined boiling process corresponds to a path 1 → 2 → 6, where the 2 → 6 transition
is coincident with the binodal and terminates where the saturated vapour pressure
equals the ultimate tensile strength of the tissue. In the presence of a tissue matrix,
explosive material ejection will thus occur regardless of the rate of energy deposition.
Thus, it is not surprising that explosive material ejection due to confined boiling has
also been reported to occur in ablation using continuous irradiation at relatively low
irradiances [63,64].
In the above scenario, little vaporization occurs prior to the onset of ablation be-
cause bubble growth is impeded by the necessity to deform the tissue matrix. For
mechanically weak tissues, much of the ejected mass consists of tissue that is frag-
mented and accelerated by the phase explosion. In these cases, the ablation enthalpy
can thus be considerably smaller than the vaporization enthalpy of water. However,
for tissues that possess a strong ECM (e. g., skin), temperatures of 400◦ C to 700◦ C
are required to produce a saturation vapour pressure exceeding the ultimate tensile
strength to initiate ablation [36]. Under these conditions, the ablation enthalpy often
exceeds the vaporization enthalpy of water.
The tissue matrix retains its mechanical integrity during nanosecond or microsec-
ond laser exposures even for temperature rises of several hundred degrees. There are
several factors that are responsible for this. First, as discussed in Sect. 2, the temper-
atures required for disintegration of the matrix increase strongly as the duration of
heat exposure decreases. Second, the application of tensile stresses to collagen fibrils
stabilizes the helical architecture and results in a significant increase of the denat-
uration temperature. Thus the generation of tensile stresses resulting from pulsed
laser heating is expected to further stabilize a collagen ECM with respect to pos-
sible collagen denaturation. Third, as discussed in Sect. 2, the extreme strain rates
produced by pulsed laser ablation processes (∼ 105 –107 s−1 ) likely increase the UTS
of the tissue matrix. Thus ablation does not involve a “liquefaction” of the tissue as
assumed in earlier models [65,66] but proceeds via the ejection of tissue fragments
driven by the vaporization of tissue water.
For low rates of volumetric energy deposition (µa I) and high number densities of
heterogeneous nuclei, the nature of the ablation process is largely independent of
tissue mechanical properties. The laser irradiation will initially heat the tissue under
equilibrium conditions at constant pressure (1 → 2) and then continue on the binodal
until the ultimate tensile strength of the tissue is reached, resulting in explosive
material removal. However, if the tissue is heated rapidly and/or a small number
density of heterogeneous nuclei are present, the tissue water will be driven into a
metastable state and a phase explosion will be induced when the spinodal limit is
reached (1 → 2 → 3 → 40 → 5). The subsequent evolution of the process now depends
on the mechanical properties of the tissue. Immediate material ejection will result for
tissues that are unable to withstand the stresses and deformations associated with
the phase explosion. However, tissues possessing high collagen content, and thus high
UTS, will not fail mechanically due to the phase explosion. The laser irradiation will
then drive a confined boiling process as indicated by path (5 → 6) in Fig. 10 until
the tissue ruptures at higher vapour pressures resulting in material removal. For
pulsed ablation of skin, surface temperatures of 400–750 ◦ C have been measured [36],
indicating that the dynamic tensile strength of the tissue matrix is higher than the
pressure at the critical point (pc = 22.09 MPa).
4.6 Vapour explosion and photothermal dissociation of the tissue ECM

For ablation using nanosecond pulses, the volumetric energy densities achieved in the
tissue water usually exceed the vaporization enthalpy of water [37,41]. Under these
conditions, the liquid water is completely transformed into vapour in a process termed
“vapour explosion”. Moreover, at temperatures exceeding ∼ 1000◦ C the constituent
molecules of the ECM are thermally dissociated into volatile fragments. Energetically,
these processes result in an ablation enthalpy higher than the vaporization of water
and are “less efficient” than phase explosion or confined boiling because they do not
involve the ejection of condensed material.
An important factor contributing to the high volumetric energy densities achieved
in nanosecond laser ablation is the recoil pressure produced by the ablation of super-
ficial layers of the target. At the beginning of laser exposure, ablation is governed by
non-equilibrium surface vaporization (Sect. 4.2). During this phase the recoil pressure
is relatively small and a phase explosion occurs as soon as the temperature reaches
the spinodal limit (Sect. 4.4). With the onset of the phase explosion, the ablation
has transformed from a surface-mediated to a volumetric process resulting in a rapid
increase of the recoil stress. This large compressive stress inhibits the ablation of
deeper tissue layers until the volumetric energy density is sufficiently high to cause
a phase transition that can overcome these higher pressures. Therefore the phase
transition of subsurface tissue layers will be more vigorous than the initial surface
vaporization because a larger volumetric energy density is required to initiate the
phase change process. This, in turn, produces a higher recoil pressure that impedes
ablation in deeper tissue layers until even higher volumetric energy densities are
reached. At any given depth, ablation starts as soon as the vapour pressure exceeds
the recoil pressure resulting from the explosive removal of more superficial layers.
This results in a “positive-feedback” process in which the volumetric energy density
and pressure values required for the onset of ablation at deeper tissue layers will con-
tinue to increase as long as the laser irradiance is increasing within the laser pulse.
After the peak irradiance of the laser pulse has passed, the volumetric energy density
and pressure at the target surface will decrease while the ablation front continues
to propagate into the target. The ablation process becomes most vigorous shortly
after the peak of the laser pulse as that is when the volumetric energy density in the
target reaches a maximum value [37]. Since the evolution of thermodynamic states
within the target is determined both by the incident laser irradiation and by the
recoil produced by the ablation plume, ablation will likely continue well beyond the
end of the laser pulse [6,37,67]. When the volumetric energy density in the target
drops below the value required for thermal dissociation of the tissue matrix, the
ejection of particulate tissue fragments will commence [37,67]. Ablation ceases when
the vapour pressure within the tissue falls below the ultimate tensile strength of the
tissue matrix that itself is influenced by the local denaturation kinetics (Sect. 5).
4.7 Effect of stress confinement on the ablation process

When performing ablation under conditions of stress confinement, the thermoelastic
stresses modify significantly the phase transition processes that drive material re-
moval. As discussed in Sect. 3, the thermoelastic stress wave propagation results in
both compressive and tensile components (Fig. 5).
The tensile thermoelastic stress waves can produce material ejection at temper-
atures less than 100◦ C in liquids with heterogeneous vapour/cavitation nuclei and
in mechanically weak tissues such as liver. This phenomenon has been compared to
back surface spallation resulting from high-pressure impact [68] and investigated in
several studies [69,70]. Nevertheless, temperatures above 100◦ C are usually necessary
Figure 11. Path taken through the p vs. T projection of the thermodynamic phase
diagram for a temperature rise above 100◦ C under stress confinement conditions. The
transition 1 → 2 corresponds to the heating phase that is coupled with the generation of
compressive stress. The transition 2 → 3 corresponds to the passage of the tensile stress
wave that leads to a crossing of the spinodal limit resulting in phase separation. After the
passage of the stress wave, the system reaches point 4 that corresponds to explosive boiling
into the large number of bubbles produced shortly before.
to initiate efficient tissue removal [69]. The important influence of tensile stress waves
at temperatures above 100◦ C has only recently attracted attention [6,42]. Figure 11
shows the path taken through the p –T phase diagram for a temperature rise above
100◦ C produced by laser irradiation with stress confinement. A heating phase (1 → 2)
coupled with the generation of compressive stress is followed by the passage of a ten-
sile stress wave (2 → 3) that leads to a crossing of the spinodal limit, resulting in
a phase explosion. The passage of the stress wave is followed by explosive boiling
into the large number of bubbles produced shortly before (point 4) resulting in vig-
orous material ejection. This ejection occurs at temperatures lower than the spinodal
temperature at atmospheric pressure (T = 305◦ C) because, as shown in Fig. 11, the
spinodal temperature is reduced with the decrease in pressure provided by the tensile
thermoelastic stresses. It is important to note that the sequence of events described
above may occur not only during surface ablation in a gaseous environment but also
when laser pulses are focussed into a transparent material. They are the basis of the
high precision in femtosecond laser nanosurgery of cells [7].
At volumetric energy densities in excess of the spinodal limit at ambient pressure,

i. e., for T > 300◦ C, the superheated liquid is unstable and the onset of explosive
ablation need not be initiated by the tensile component of the thermoelastic stress.
Nevertheless, the thermoelastic stress transient can still contribute to material re-
moval. The magnitude of thermoelastic transients produced by a given temperature
rise under conditions of stress confinement is much larger than the saturation vapour
pressure resulting from the same temperature rise and for T > 1000◦ C may well
exceed 1 GPa. The compressive component of the thermoelastic stress wave upon
propagation will develop into a shock wave. The propagation of this shock wave into
the depth of the target along with energy dissipation at the shock front [71,72] results
in tissue heating at locations beyond those heated directly by the laser irradiation and
subsequent heat diffusion. Shock wave propagation thus serves as a form of convective
heat transfer that extends the ablation depth and increases ablation efficiency [73].
Experimental evidence for shock wave induced phase changes of water after laser-
induced breakdown was provided by Vogel and Noack [74]. For pulsed laser surface
ablation, temperatures in the shock wave region will usually be below the spinodal
limit since a pressure jump in the neighbourhood of 5 GPa is required to heat water
from room temperature to 300◦ C [71]. Nevertheless, the temperature rise can result
in ablation because the tensile component of the thermoelastic stress that follows the
shock wave will catalyze an explosive boiling process as described above. Convective
heat transfer will become important for ablation only for sufficiently large volumet-
ric energy densities and for very high degrees of stress confinement, i. e. mainly for
ultrashort laser pulses. We conclude that regardless of the volumetric energy den-
sity, stress confinement invariably serves to lower the ablation threshold and increase
ablation efficiency [6,42,69,73,75].
5 Ablation plume dynamics
The phase transitions described in the previous section drive the formation of a plume
consisting of material removed from the ablation site. Usually, the ablation dynam-
ics and plume formation is not governed by just a single type of phase transition
but by an interplay of different transitions occurring at the target surface and in its
bulk. Moreover, the type and strength of the phase transition may change during
the laser pulse depending on the volumetric energy densities reached at each target
location when the phase change occurs. The characteristics of the ablation plume
reflect the underlying ablation dynamics and its analysis provides the insight nec-
essary to draw conclusions about the phase transitions involved in a given ablation
event. Furthermore, the plume dynamics influence the ablation process in various
ways. The primary ejection of ablation products perpendicular to the tissue surface
induces a recoil pressure that may produce additional, secondary material expulsion
and cause collateral effects in the bulk tissue. Flow components parallel to the tissue
surface that develop at later times may result in a redeposition of ablated material.
Scattering and absorption of the incident light by the ablation plume reduce the
amount of energy deposited in the target and limit the ablation efficiency at high
radiant exposures.
Figure 12. Early phase of water ablation by a Q-switched Er:YAG laser pulse of 70 ns
duration, photographed using a novel white light Schlieren technique [76]. The irradiated
spot size was 700 µm, the radiant exposure 2.8 J/cm2 (25× ablation threshold). All times
refer to the beginning of the laser pulse. The dynamics is characterized by vapour plume
formation, the emission of external and internal shock waves, droplet ejection, and the onset
of recoil-induced material expulsion.
To date, most investigations of the plume dynamics and acoustic phenomena as-
sociated with pulsed laser ablation of biological tissues have been performed experi-
mentally by time-resolved photography, probe beam deflectometry, and spectroscopic
techniques as reviewed in Refs. [6] and [76]. Here, we focus on the description of the
plume dynamics itself rather than on the techniques of investigation. We first discuss
the dynamics for water ablation and then progress to the more complicated case
of tissue ablation where the primary ablation process and recoil-induced material
expulsion are modified by the tissue matrix.
5.1 Primary material ejection in nanosecond ablation

For Q-switched laser pulses of 50–100 ns duration, the rate of energy deposition is
extremely large. Close to threshold, the ablation process for liquids such as water
is typically characterized by non-equilibrium mass transfer [52] at the target surface
followed by a phase explosion of the superficial liquid layer [37]. However, when pulse
energies well above the ablation threshold are used, large volumetric energy densities
are produced in the target material that result in an ablation process characterized by
more vigorous types of phase transitions. To illustrate this, Fig. 12 shows the sequence
of events in the early phase of Q-switched Er:YAG laser (λ = 2.94 µm) ablation
of water for a radiant exposure of 2.8 J/cm2 , ≈ 25× the ablation threshold. The
ablation dynamics is characterized by a succession of explosive vaporization, shock
wave emission, and ejection of very fine droplets. The plume remains fairly small
until shortly after the peak intensity of the laser pulse, but then rapidly expands.
This means that the main part of the ablated material is ejected towards the end and
after the laser pulse. The layered structure of the plume reveals that different types
of phase transition follow each other while the ablation front propagates into the
target. The fact that the top part of the plume is completely transparent indicates
that the volumetric energy density in the superficial target layers is larger than the
vaporization enthalpy of water at room temperature under atmospheric pressure
(ε = 2.59 kJ/cm3 ). Therefore, this entire liquid volume is transformed into vapour in
a “vapour explosion”. When the ablation front has reached a depth where the energy
density becomes smaller than the vaporization enthalpy of water, the superheated
tissue water starts to decompose into vapour and liquid in a phase explosion, and
droplet ejection commences. Droplet ejection is first visible after ≈ 700 ns and lasts for
a few microseconds. The droplets cannot be resolved on the photographs and appear
as a reddish haze. The reddish color indicates that the droplet size is sufficiently small
to cause Rayleigh scattering by which blue light is scattered much stronger than red
light [77]. As a consequence, the red spectral components of the illumination dominate
the light that passes through the imaging optics. While the droplet ejection still
continues, an indentation of the water surface forms and a “splash” region develops
at the periphery of the ablation spot due to the recoil pressure produced by the phase
transitions (see Sect. 5.3 below).
When soft tissues are ablated at moderate radiant exposures, the entire ablation
plume consists of tissue fragments, as illustrated in Fig. 13(b) for Er:YAG laser abla-
tion of liver at a radiant exposure of 1.4 J/cm2 . At the same radiant exposure, the top
layer of a water target is already completely vaporized and thus transparent as shown
in Fig. 13(a). At a larger radiant exposure of 5.4 J/cm2 (Fig. 13(c)), the top part of the
plume becomes transparent for both water and liver ablation, and particulate frag-
ments are ejected only after about 200 ns. The sequence of gaseous ablation products
followed by particulates could be visualized only by means of a photographic setup
suited for detecting phase objects. In previous studies only the particulate fragments
were observed and it was concluded mistakenly that the ablation process commences
well after the end of the laser pulse [78]. In reality, the transparency of the top part of
the plume indicates that during the initial ablation phase tissue water is completely
vaporized and biomolecules are thermally dissociated into volatile fragments, which
occurs at temperatures above 1000◦ C. For the liver target, the subsequent ejection of
larger, non-transparent tissue fragments is driven by a phase explosion of the tissue
water. The pressure developed during the phase separation suffices to rupture the
weak tissue matrix in liver parenchyma (Sect. 4.5). The ejection ceases when the
ablation front reaches a depth where the temperature drops below the stability limit
of the superheated tissue water. The different optical appearance of the transparent
and opaque parts of the ablation plume is due to differences in molecular composi-
tion and particle size distribution but not necessarily indicative for disparities in the
average mass density.
Figure 13. Q-switched Er:YAG laser ablation of (a) water at Φ = 1.4 J/cm2 , (b) liver at
Φ = 1.4 J/cm2 , and (c) liver at Φ = 5.4 J/cm2 . The plume consists of water vapour (top)
and a droplet/vapour mixture in (a), tissue fragments in (b), and dissociated biomolecules
(top) and tissue fragments (bottom) in (c). The volumetric energy densities averaged over
the optical penetration depth are ≈ 5.2 kJ/cm3 in (a), ≈ 4 kJ/cm3 in (b), and ≈ 9 kJ/cm3
in (c).
For the ablation of skin at large radiant exposures, a similar sequence of biomolecule
dissociation followed by ejection of tissue fragments was observed [37]. However, in
this case the ejection of tissue fragments occurred over a shorter time interval than
for liver. Ablation ceased when the ablation front reached a depth where the vapour
pressure dropped below the tensile strength of the extracellular tissue matrix. Nev-
ertheless, fragment ejection was found to continue for several microseconds after the
laser pulse while the tissue matrix is increasingly weakened by thermal denaturation.
Generally, the size of the ejected tissue particles is small at early times after the
laser pulse and increases with time [37,78]. The entire sequence of phase transitions
occurring during water and tissue ablation is summarized in Fig. 14.
Since ablation becomes a volumetric process as soon as the spinodal limit is ex-
ceeded and a phase explosion sets in (Sect. 4.4), it is not self-evident why large
volumetric energy densities sufficient for a vapour explosion and dissociation of
biomolecules should be reached in pulsed laser tissue ablation. However, one needs
to consider that the recoil stress produced by the phase transitions of the uppermost
tissue layers delays the phase transitions in underlying layers because the spinodal
temperature increases with increasing pressure (see Fig. 6). The ongoing absorption
of laser energy into the underlying layers can thus drive the thermodynamic state into
the supercritical regime. Even larger recoil stresses are produced when these layers
are ablated, and the phase transitions in deeper layers are delayed even more. This
“positive-feedback” process continues at least until the intensity peak of the laser
pulse is reached after which a relaxation process resulting in explosive ablation com-
mences and continues for several microseconds after the end of the laser pulse. The
energy densities generated during the runaway process are in the order of 10 kJ cm−3
[37] and give rise to recoil pressures of several hundred MPa (Sect. 4.3).
Figure 14. Sequence of phase transitions and corresponding plume constituents in abla-
tion at radiant exposures well above threshold for (a) water ablation, and (b) ablation of
mechanically strong tissues such as, for example, skin.
The high volumetric energy density in the target material produced in Q-switched
Er:YAG laser ablation results in a very large initial expansion velocity of the ablation
plume that drives the emission of an equally fast shock wave. Shock front velocities
are usually on the order of 2000–4000 m/s for both IR and UV wavelengths [37,
79–81], i. e., they reach values up to Mach 12. Measured shock wave and plume
velocities correlate with the water content of the samples because lower water content
results in smaller volumetric energy densities and less vigorous ablation. By contrast,
the velocity of particulate fragments is larger for mechanically strong tissues (up
to 1700 m/s for skin) than the velocity of droplets ejected in water ablation (up
to 280 m/s) [37]. This is because the temperature required for thermal dissociation
of the tissue matrix into volatile products is higher than the temperature required
for complete vaporization of water. Therefore, tissue fragments become visible early
in the ablation process when the ablation front has reached a depth at which the
temperature is below the level required for thermolysis. At this time, the pressure
driving the ejection is still very high. By contrast, droplet ejection starts only once
the temperature at the ablation front has reached a lower level corresponding to the
onset of a phase explosion. This results in smaller velocities for the droplet ejection.
The ablation plume exhibits complex dynamics. The plume expansion is nearly
spherical during the initial phases of expansion but begins to propagate preferentially
in the forward direction after 1–2 µs. For small radiant exposures, the interaction
of the piston-like forward movement with the ambient air at rest results in ring
vortex formation [37,82]. For larger radiant exposures, a region of high density and
pressure is created at the contact front between plume and surrounding air. The
molecules and molecular clusters propagating with the plume possess a non-zero
average velocity. When they collide with air molecules that are, on average, at rest,
they are partially reflected back into the plume. As visible in Fig. 12, this reflection
leads to the formation of an internal shock wave that begins to propagate toward
the target surface when the rarefaction from the plume expansion has reduced the
pressure in the plume considerably below its initial value [37,83,84]. The internal
shock interacts with the particles and droplets of the plume and deforms the shape
of the particle cloud during a time interval lasting about 10 µs. Due to the heating at
the shock front, the passage of the internal shock wave through the reddish droplet
cloud results in their vaporization.
The propagation of the shock front after a strong explosion in a homogeneous
atmosphere was first theoretically described by Taylor [85] and Sedov [86,87] and,
using a higher-order approximation, by Sakurai [88,89]. These theories neglect the
mass of the gas and debris driving the shock wave and are thus valid only once the
shock wave has swept over a mass of atmospheric gas much greater than the mass
in which the energy was initially concentrated. Various authors have later obtained
solutions for the mass-dependent flow regime [90–92] and simple analytic solutions
are available for some limiting cases. When the mass of the gas encompassed by the
shock wave is much greater than the initial ablated mass and the pressure driving
the shock is much greater than the atmospheric pressure ahead of the shock front,
the position R(t) of a spherical shock wave is governed by [93]
R(t) = ξ(E0 /ρ0 )1/5 t2/5 , (9)
and that of a planar shock wave such as emitted from a large irradiated spot size by
R(t) = ξ(E0 /ρ0 )1/3 t2/3 . (10)
Here E0 is the energy driving the explosion, ρ0 the density of the undisturbed gas, and
ξ is a constant that is a function of the specific heat capacity ratio γ of the gas. The
2/5
peak pressure produced scales proportional to E0 . Once the shock wave pressure
becomes comparable to the ambient pressure, its propagation is better described
by the Jones approximation [94,95]. When the mass of the material removed is very
large or the background pressure very low (including vacuum), the motion of a planar
shock wave can be described by [96]
R(t) = ξ(E0 /ρ0 )1/2 t . (11)
A comparison of experimental R(t) data with Eqs. (9–11) allows an assessment of

the transduction of laser pulse energy into blast wave energy E0 [95,97].
More refined numerical simulations by Brode [84] and the analytical treatment by
Arnold and co-workers [83] include the spherical movements of the external shock
front, the contact front between plume and ambient gas, and the internal shock
front within the plume. Recently, Chen and co-workers [98] presented a model for the
propagation of the external shock wave propagation in atmospheric pressure laser
ablation of water-rich targets that incorporates the nonlinear absorption of water
and the phase explosion due to superheating. The model predicts a succession of an
initially slow plume emission followed by a vigorously accelerated expansion, in good
agreement with the experimental results of Apitz and Vogel [37] and with the views
presented above.
Figure 15. Dark-field Schlieren images of the acoustic transients and ablation plume dur-
ing skin ablation with a 200-µs Er:YAG laser pulse (Φ = 20 J/cm2 , spot size 2.3 mm)
photographed (a) 22.4 µs and (b) 40 µs after the onset of the laser pulse. The images show
acoustic transients arising from individual spikes in the free-running laser irradiation, and
the plume containing vapour and tissue fragments. (Reprinted from Ref. [76] with permis-
sion. Copyright 2006 Optical Society of America).
5.2 Primary material ejection in microsecond ablation
Free-running lasers typically provide pulse durations longer than 100 µs. Thus, unlike
nanosecond ablation, plume formation and expansion occurs largely during the laser
irradiation. As a result, the ablation plume influences the energy deposition of the
laser radiation into the tissue target, and the plume dynamics is also influenced by the
interaction of the laser beam with the ejected material. Nevertheless, the succession of
a sub-ablative phase, development of a vapour plume, and material ejection is similar
as with nanosecond pulses even though it occurs on a much longer time scale [99].
However, the heating rates available from microsecond laser pulses are generally much
smaller than those available from nanosecond laser pulses of moderate to high radiant
exposures. These lower heating rates are not sufficient to generate the temperatures
necessary to dissociate ECM molecules and are only able to produce supercritical
water at very large radiant exposures.
Free-running laser emission is characterized by intensity fluctuations during the
laser pulse (“spiking” behaviour). These intensity peaks modulate the vaporization
and material ejection rates [78,100] as well as the emission of acoustic transients
generated during the ablation process [101,102]. The intensity spikes of the laser pulse
are coupled with the generation of individual transients as shown in Fig. 15.
The mechanisms leading to material ejection are the same as for nanosecond pulses:
a phase explosion for mechanically weak materials and a succession of phase explo-
sion and confined boiling for mechanically stronger tissues. Previously it was believed
that the generation of a phase explosion requires pulse durations in the nanosecond
range [41]. However, using time-resolved photography, Nahen and Vogel [99] demon-
Figure 16. Dynamics of Er:YAG laser ablation of water, gelatin with 70% water content,
and skin using a radiant exposure of 4.6 J/cm2 , 5 mm spot size, and 200 µs pulse duration.
The times after the beginning of the laser pulse when the photographs were taken are
indicated on the individual frames. Note the increasing delay in the ejection of particulate
matter with increasing mechanical strength of the target.
strated that a phase explosion can also be produced with pulse durations on the
order of 200 µs. This is shown in Fig. 16 that compares the ablation dynamics for
Er:YAG laser irradiation of water, gelatin and skin using identical radiant exposures.
The rapid droplet ejection during Er:YAG laser ablation of water can only be pro-
duced by a phase explosion because in the absence of stress confinement no other
mechanism gives rise to a material ejection perpendicular to the water surface. In
gelatin, a phase explosion occurs at the same time as in water. However, the phase
explosion only deforms the gelatin surface without rupturing it, and fracture of the
gelatin surface and rapid particle ejection are observed only after a further pressure
build-up through confined boiling (Sect. 4.5). The material ejection during skin abla-
tion is also characterized by a phase explosion followed by confined boiling. However,
the higher mechanical strength of skin causes a further delay of material ejection
compared to gelatin. It is important to note that both for skin and gelatin targets
fragments are ejected in the form of solid particles. The absence of droplet-like ejecta
indicates that gelatin exposed to temperatures near the spinodal limit does not melt
within 200 µs, even though it melts at 60◦ C for sufficiently long heat exposures. This
finding is consistent with the strong increase in denaturation temperature for very
short exposures that was discussed in Sect. 2.
Initial material ejection velocities observed for microsecond laser ablation are
roughly one order of magnitude lower than those reported for nanosecond abla-
tion [103]. For free-running pulses, an increase of the radiant exposure results in an
earlier onset of the material ejection but does not change the ejection velocity signif-
icantly. It is only for very large radiant exposures in which the first intensity spike
of the free-running pulse provides a dose in excess of the ablation threshold that an
increase of the ejection velocity is observed. By contrast, for nanosecond exposures
an increase of the radiant exposure is always coupled with an increase of the volu-
metric energy density that translates directly into a higher temperature, pressure,
and ejection velocity.
In both Q-switched and free-running laser ablation of soft tissues, material ejec-
tion continues for a considerable time following laser irradiation that can last up to
several milliseconds [78–80,82,99,104]. In general, post-pulse ablation lasts longer for
mechanically weaker tissues, larger radiant exposures, and larger laser beam diam-
eters. One possible driving force for the continuation of the ablation process after
the end of the laser pulse is the heat retained in the tissue. A progressive weaken-
ing of the tissue matrix through thermal denaturation enables a propagation of the
ablation front until the vapour pressure in the residual tissue drops below the UTS
of the weakened tissue matrix. Another very important source of post-pulse ablation
are hydrodynamic phenomena such as recoil stress-induced material expulsion.
5.3 Recoil stress and secondary material ejection

Both the rapidly expanding vapour plume and the ejected particles generate recoil
stresses that impart momentum to the tissue. The linear momentum per unit area
of the ablated material l is the time integral of the recoil stress σrec at the target
surface Z ∞
l= σrec (t) dt . (12)
0
A derivation of the peak recoil stress requires assumptions on the nature and dura-
tion of the ablation process. Various authors have presented solutions for the peak
stress amplitude produced by a continuous vaporization process [40,66,105,106], and
by explosive ablation where the entire laser pulse is deposited prior to the onset of
material removal [41,107].
Experimental values for the recoil stress produced by nanosecond laser ablation
have been obtained through direct pressure measurements using piezoelectric trans-
Figure 17. Stress transients resulting from TEA CO2 laser (tp = 30 ns) irradiation of
porcine dermis for radiant exposures below the ablation threshold (i), at threshold (ii), and
above threshold (iii)–(v). Radiant exposures below threshold produce bipolar thermoelastic
stress transients. For radiant exposures equal to and above threshold, a compressive pulse
is produced by the ablative recoil. (Adapted from Ref. [41] with permission. Copyright 1996
Biophysical Society)
ducers [40,41,108,109], and, for water ablation, through analysis of the speed of the
recoil-induced shock wave [37]. Peak pressures range from a few MPa at the ablation
threshold up to several hundred MPa for radiant exposures well above threshold. For
free-running microsecond laser pulses, average stress values during the laser irradia-
tion have been determined through measurement of the recoil momentum using the
ballistic pendulum method [65,106], while the peak stress amplitudes produced by
the intensity maxima of the free-running pulses were obtained via transducer mea-
surements [109]. Peak values of recoil stress produced during cornea ablation using
free-running Er:YSSG laser irradiation at a radiant exposure of 50 J/cm2 amounted
to 2 MPa [109] while the average pressure value for skin ablation at the same radiant
exposure was only 0.3 MPa [106].
In stress-confined tissue ablation, the compressive recoil stress transient is superim-
posed on a bipolar thermoelastic transient [110]. Figure 17 demonstrates the transi-
tion from a bipolar stress transient for radiant exposures below the ablation threshold
to a monopolar compressive transient when the ablation threshold is exceeded. This
transition and the corresponding increase in peak pressure is a sensitive method for
the determination of the ablation threshold [40,41,108].
The recoil stress produced by both vaporization and material ejection in the pri-
mary ablation phase can induce a secondary material expulsion process that leads
to a strong increase of the ablation efficiency [37,105]. Recoil-induced material expul-
sion is most pronounced during ablation of liquids and mechanically weak tissues.
Figure 18. Recoil-induced material expulsion in water ablation by 200-µs Er:YAG laser
pulses, together with a schematic illustration showing the pathlines of the ejected material
fragments. The lateral component of the recoil-induced flow collides with the surrounding
fluid that is at rest, thus producing an upward directed splash.
Material will be ejected whenever the recoil stress component in the radial direction
exceeds the mechanical strength of the tissue, as illustrated in Fig. 18.
The sequence of primary material ejection and recoil-induced material expulsion
is shown in Fig. 19 for free-running and Q-switched Er:YAG laser ablation of liver.
While the primary material ejection visible at short delay times takes place across
the entire ablation area, recoil-induced expulsion occurs preferentially at the ablation
crater rim and includes the ejection of tissue fragments much larger than those ejected
during the initial phase explosion. The recoil-induced ejection dynamics resembles
the surface indentation and subsequent “splash” produced by the impact of liquid
droplets on bulk liquids that has already been investigated in considerable detail
[111,112]. The mass expelled at later times far exceeds the mass ejected during the
primary ablation phase. However, the velocity of the ejecta is considerably slower.
Recoil-induced material expulsion begins after the primary ejection process, re-
quires a radiant exposure well above the ablation threshold, and provides an increase
of the ablation efficiency. A marked increase of the ablation efficiency at a certain
radiant exposure has been observed for weak tissues as liver and myocardium as well
as for gelatin with high water content but not for tissues with greater mechanical
strength such as skin [37,113]. Remarkably, no recoil-induced ejection was observed
in skin ablation using Q-switched Er:YAG laser pulses even when the recoil stress
was about 50 times larger than the quasi-static ultimate tensile strength of skin [37].
Figure 19. Recoil-induced material expulsion for liver ablation by (a) 200-µs Er:YAG laser
pulses at 100 J/cm2 radiant exposure and 1.1 mm spot size, (b) 70-ns Er:YAG laser pulses at
5.4 J/cm2 radiant exposure and 0.5 mm spot size. The primary material ejection produced
by the phase changes in the target is also visible in all images of (a) and in the first image
of (b).
To understand this discrepancy, we must first consider that the recoil-induced ten-
sile and shear stresses that contribute to tissue fracture may be considerably smaller
than the measured compressive recoil stress. Moreover, as discussed in Sect. 2, the
dynamic tensile strength of tissue at the extreme strain rates produced in pulsed
laser ablation is much higher than the quasi-static values for the UTS found in the
literature. Finally, tissue fracture will only occur at sufficiently large strain that may
not be achieved by stress transients of very short duration [6,22].
For mechanically weak tissues, the recoil-stress-induced material expulsion pro-
duces craters with a depth much larger then the optical penetration depth and a
diameter much larger than the irradiated spot size, as shown in Fig. 20(a,b). For
mechanically strong tissues, the recoil stress does not lead to material expulsion.
However, it can produce tissue tearing at the sides of the ablation crater as seen in
Fig. 20(c). The cracks and tearing patterns arise preferentially along morphological
structures with reduced mechanical strength such as the transitions between corneal
lamellae, sinusoid spaces holding blood between plates of cells in liver tissue, and
their orientation is also influenced by the weakness of the longitudinal strength of
blood vessels compared to their circumferential strength [106]. Tissue tearing at the
rim of ablation craters was not observed for skin due to its three-dimensional collagen
network that results in an approximately isotropic UTS.
Figure 20. (a,b) Craters produced during liver ablation by 200-µs Er:YAG laser pulses
of 32 J/cm2 and 50 J/cm2 radiant exposure (2.5 and 1.6 mm spot size, respectively). (c)
Histologic slide showing an ablation crater in bovine cornea produced by an Erbium:YSGG
laser pulse with tp = 250 µs and Φ0 = 100 J/cm2 . The tissue around the ablation crater
exhibits a 25–50 µm zone of thermal damage (dark) and mechanical tearing between the
corneal lamellae. (c) is reprinted from Ref. [106] with permission. Copyright 1993 Optical
Society of America).
Recoil-induced stress transients can produce also more subtle forms of collateral
tissue damage further away from the irradiation site. Putative photoacoustic damage
created during ArF-excimer (λ = 193 nm) laser ablation of skin was described by
Watanabe and co-workers [114] and Yashima and co-workers [115]. The formation of
tensile stress with an amplitude of 3.5 MPa inside the eyeball through diffraction
of the recoil stress wave produced during ArF-excimer laser ablation of the cornea
was shown by Pini and co-workers [116]. Könz and co-workers [109] demonstrated
recoil-induced damage of the corneal endothelium after mid-IR laser ablation of the
corneal stroma that was due to the tensile stress generated upon partial reflection of
the compressive recoil stress transient at the cornea–aqueous interface.
Thus, to achieve precise and gentle tissue ablation it is not sufficient to simply
select a laser wavelength with small optical penetration depth and a pulse duration
providing thermal confinement. In addition, one must avoid the production of ex-
tensive recoil stresses that may degrade the quality of the ablated surface and/or
induce collateral mechanical damage. This restriction imposes an upper limit for the
incident radiant exposure.
5.4 Shielding and flow-induced material redeposition
Absorption, scattering, and diffuse reflection of incident laser light by the ablation
plume leads to a reduction of the energy delivered to the target tissue and a reduc-
tion of the ablation efficiency. Direct measurements of the diffuse reflectance of the
plume [117] and of the entire reduction of optical transmission through the plume [99]
yielded values of the extinction coefficient within the plume produced by soft tissue
ablation using Er:YAG laser irradiation (λ = 2.94 µm) on the order of 1 cm−1 [99].
Figure 21. Dark field images of water ablation at 5.4 J/cm2 radiant exposure with and
without plasma formation (0.5 mm spot size, image taken 2 µs after the laser exposure).
The plasma originates in hot spots at the water surface and grows into the incoming laser
beam. The recoil-induced cavity is considerably smaller in the case with plasma formation
due to the “shielding” of the target by light absorption in the plasma. (Reprinted from
Ref. [37] with permission. Copyright 2005 Springer Verlag).
Plume reflectance measurements by Nishioka and Domankevitz [117] showed that

shielding is strongly enhanced when a series of pulses is applied instead of single
pulses. For Er:YAG laser ablation of skin at a spot size of 2 mm, Kaufmann and
Hibst observed a decrease of the etch depth per pulse from 40 µm to 10 µm when
the pulse repetition rate was increased from 1 Hz to 10 Hz [118]. The reduction of the
ablation efficiency was attributed to increased shielding by the ablation plume. When
a considerably smaller spot size is used, the lateral spread of the plume removes a
larger fraction of the ablation products out of the beam path, and the etch depth
does not decrease with increasing repetition rate [119].
At very high radiant exposures, plasma formation in front of the target may lead to
a further decrease of the optical transmission to the target [37,40,120], as illustrated
in Fig. 21. Plasma formation starts at the target surface but the plasma grows rapidly
after ignition into the space in front of the target surface causing an effective shielding
effect.
When radiant exposures close to the ablation threshold are used, the plume ac-
quires a mushroom-like shape that exhibits a ring vortex at its top, a thin stem with
a diameter smaller than the ablation spot and a radial flow component parallel to the
surface at the foot of the plume (see also Fig. 12) [37,82,104]. The radial flow parallel
to the tissue surface can result in a redistribution of ablation products across the
ablation spot. For example, when performing corneal refractive surgery using large
laser spot sizes, ablation rates were found to be smaller in the centre of the ablation
zone than in its periphery even though the irradiance was spatially homogeneous.
As a result “central islands” remained that distorted the intended refractive cor-
rection [121]. Photographic investigations of the plume dynamics revealed that the
“central islands” are the result of a redeposition of ablated material after the end of
the laser pulse that preferentially occurs near the stagnation point of the flow at the
centre of the ablated area [82]. A second factor contributing to the non-uniformity of
the ablation rate is the attenuation of subsequent laser pulses in the centre region of
the ablated area by remnants of the plume from previous pulses that preferentially
stay in the vicinity of the stagnation point [82].
6 Conclusions
6.1 Ablation models

In the previous sections we established that pulsed laser ablation always consists of
a sequence of different phase transition processes that occur during and after the
laser irradiation. Moreover, we have shown that the initial primary material ejection
is often followed by a secondary, recoil-induced, ejection. The type and vigour of the
phase transition and ejection processes during an individual ablation event depend
on both the laser irradiance and radiant exposure as well as on the optical and me-
chanical tissue properties. Thus, it is impossible to formulate a simple comprehensive
ablation model that describes these different aspects of the ablation process. Never-
theless, it is useful to formulate simplified models that elucidate basic features of the
ablation behaviour and parameter dependencies for specific ablation regimes.
One approach is to use metrics of the ablation process such as the threshold,
enthalpy, and efficiency of ablation to predict ablation rates without reference to
mechanistic aspects of the ablation process. Such heuristic models are particularly
valuable to illustrate the ablation behaviour in extreme cases such as the “steady
state” model for long laser pulses and the “blow-off” model for very short pulses [6].
Unfortunately, their relative success has, for a long time, obscured the real complexity
of the ablation behaviour.
Analytical models that link the ablation outcome to underlying mechanisms pro-
vide more insight into the collateral damage arising from ablation than the heuristic
models, but all models presented to date are applicable only over a very limited
range of radiant exposures and material properties [6]. One will have to resort to
computational approaches to model the full complexity of pulsed laser tissue ab-
lation. However, much information on dynamic material properties required for a
faithful modelling is still missing. These data include dynamic optical properties (ab-
sorption and scattering coefficients), thermal properties (heat capacity, Grüneisen
coefficient), and mechanical properties (elastic and shear modulus, ultimate tensile
strength) that depend on the magnitude and kinetics of the temperature, pressure,
and strain rates achieved during the ablation process. This lack of data is now rec-
ognized to be even more important than was thought just a few years ago as recent
experimental studies demonstrate that the temperatures and pressures involved in
most ablation processes are more extreme than assumed previously. We now know
that pulsed laser tissue ablation may be associated with a temperature rise of hun-
dreds to thousands of K, recoil pressures of several hundred MPa, and strain rates on
the order of 105 to 107 s−1 [6,37]. Several of the above mentioned dynamic material
properties are presently known only at the lower margin of this parameter space.
Molecular dynamics simulations [122–124] have yielded a wealth of information
regarding the inception of phase transitions and the time-evolution of the size and
velocity distribution of the ablation products that are difficult to obtain by other
means. However, enormous computational facilities, that are currently unavailable,
are required to perform simulations that span the entire spatial and temporal scales
usually encountered in realistic applications of tissue ablation.
6.2 Control of ablated mass and thermal and mechanical side effects
The heuristic ablation models mentioned above predict that, if the removal of large
amounts of material is desired, the use of long laser pulses that achieve a steady-
state-like ablation process will be more suitable than ablation based on a blow-off
process. This arises because the ablated mass scales linearly with radiant exposure in
a steady state ablation process but logarithmically in a blow-off process [6]. However,
the difference between the two types of ablation process becomes less pronounced if
optical shielding by the ablation products (Sect. 5.4) is significant. A steady state
process is most advantageous under conditions where the absorption of the incident
laser beam by the ablation plume is markedly smaller than the absorption in the
target tissue present in the blow-off situation.
The most direct strategy to control thermal side effects involves the selection of a
pulse duration that is sufficiently short to minimize heat diffusion during the laser
pulse from the volume of energy deposition into the non-ablated tissue (Eq. (4)).
However, similar results may also be obtained using longer pulses if the velocity
of the ablation front during the laser pulse is comparable or faster than the heat
diffusion into the residual tissue. A theoretical analysis of this strategy was presented
by Venugopalan and co-workers [53], and experimental evidence for its validity was
presented by various authors [53,118,125].
Thermal side effects can be diminished further by selecting laser pulse durations
sufficiently short to provide both thermal and stress confinement. Stress confinement
serves to lower the ablation threshold and increase the ablation efficiency (Sect. 4.7),
and the lowering of the ablation enthalpy in the stress confinement regime reduces
the residual heat in the tissue [126,127].
Following the above, high precision ablation can be achieved by selecting a laser
wavelength featuring a very small optical penetration depth combined with a short
pulse duration sufficient to provide thermal confinement, and, if possible, also stress
confinement. However, we showed in Sect. 5.3 that one also needs to avoid the pro-
duction of extensive recoil stresses to minimize mechanical side effects. Extensive
recoil stresses may degrade the smoothness of the ablated surface and/or induce col-
lateral mechanical damage; especially in friable tissues [37]. This restriction imposes
an upper limit for the incident radiant exposure and implies that the finest tissue
effects can be achieved by working close to the ablation threshold.
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Laser speckle metrology – a tool

serving the conservation of cultural heritage
K. D. Hinsch
Applied Optics, Institute of Physics, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg
26111 Oldenburg, Germany
Abstract. Deterioration of artwork is often connected to mechanical material degradation

that starts at microscopic scales. Insight into decay mechanisms can therefore be obtained
by monitoring microscopic deformation and displacement fields. Thus, the proper optical
methods become an ideal tool for restorers and conservators, the more as the methods are
non-intrusive and remotely applicable. We show how the scope of modern speckle metrology
can be adapted to this aim. Refinements of correlation imaging, speckle interferometry and
low-coherence detection as well as the time average monitoring of vibrations provide a wealth
of methods that have been applied successfully in historical objects.
1 Introduction
For many years the preservation of artwork was mainly the domain of the humanities.
Lately, however, science is playing an increasing role in the analysis, conservation and
restoration of historical objects. For unique and delicate specimens – from skilfully
carved stone sculptures to colourful medieval wall paintings – analytical techniques
must be non-invasive. Optics is providing a powerful and versatile set of tools for sur-
veying and analyzing historical treasures [1–3]. Since they were made these priceless
objects have aged. They deteriorate due to varying climate conditions or polluted
environments and their preservation requires special countermeasures. Critical moni-
toring of the state of the object, identification and understanding of the deterioration
processes and control of remedies are important.
Often, deterioration starts at the microscopic level, initially producing weaken-
ing of the mechanical cohesion in the sample. This shows up in irregular minute
displacements or changes in the micro-topography of an objects surface. Thus, opti-
cal contouring and deformation mapping methods can provide essential data on the
distribution of mechanical stress in the sample, indicate weak spots, or provide early-
warning data on objects at risk. Suitable methods must provide sufficient sensitivity
to detect displacements or changes in the topography well down in the micrometer
domain. Yet, they should still operate successfully on-site in spite of disturbances
like rigid-body creeping motions, annoying vibrations or air turbulence. The state of
the object may also be checked by monitoring its deformation response to an external
mechanical or thermal load (comparable to the medical checkup in health care).
260 K. D. Hinsch
Generally, any of the optical methods for displacement mapping that are employed
in experimental mechanics are also suited for the present task – provided they are
robust enough to be applied in an environment outside a laboratory. Optical tech-
niques are often based on the evaluation of the laser light field scattered from the
surface under inspection. This field is characterized by its random nature – manifest
in the speckled appearance of the image of the object. This laser speckle pattern can
be considered a “fingerprint” of the surface and its analysis may provide the wanted
data on object changes. This may be done by correlation of the speckle intensity fields
using comparatively simple equipment. The motion of the fingerprint, so to speak,
provides displacement data at sensitivity well in the micrometer range. Thus, the
delicate response of pieces of art to environmental loads or an artificial external stim-
ulus can be monitored. At the same time any small change in the fingerprint pattern
provides a measure for average changes in the surface profile that may quantify the
deterioration attack on the surface. For the detection of still smaller displacements
(sub-wavelength sensitivity) interferometric methods that measure phase shifts are
needed.
The present article introduces characteristic features of speckle metrology and
illustrates its basic performance in art monitoring. Then it concentrates on recent
sophisticated refinements to extend the performance to specific situations at delicate
objects or in unfavourable measurement environments that otherwise would rule out
this kind of sensitive optical metrology. Finally, we devise novel approaches that
explore the situation even underneath a surface.
2 Digital image correlation – displacement fields, surface deterioration

and ablation monitoring
When a rough-surface object is viewed or photographed in laser-light illumination

its image is covered with a granular pattern of speckles [4]. These are produced by
interference of the many elementary light waves scattered from the irregularities of the
surface. The random phases imposed on the light produce interference of statistically
varying outcome. Thus the speckle pattern is taken as the fingerprint of the surface
– encoded by the optical system doing the observation. Any displacement of the
surface will produce an according motion of the speckle pattern and any changes in
the microscopic topography of the surface will alter the speckle pattern.
To measure the displacement field of a sample surface we just need to take an
image of the object before and after the motion – usually with an electronic cam-
era. The images are then evaluated by determining locally the shifts of the recorded
speckle patterns. For this purpose, the images are subdivided into a matrix of small
interrogation regions. For each of the sub-images the displacement field is computed
from a two-dimensional cross correlation – thus the technique is often termed Digital
Speckle Correlation or Digital Image Correlation (DIC) [5]. The advantage over tra-
ditional techniques is that the surface need not show visual details nor do we have
to affix any markings to the object. Furthermore, high sensitivity can be obtained
by using small-sized speckles which is achieved by stopping down the imaging aper-
ture. Sophisticated algorithms yield the displacement field with sub-pixel resolution
Laser speckle metrology 261
of roughly a micrometer. Mind, however, that the method is primarily limited to de-
tect displacements normal to the viewing direction, the so-called in-plane component.
The experimental setup is extremely simple consisting of light source, CCD-camera
and computer.
Practically, the displacement value is obtained from the position of the cross-
correlation peak. Successful performance of the method thus requires a certain sim-
ilarity of the speckle patterns in both the images compared – otherwise correlation
is lost and the peak degrades. When decorrelation of the speckle patterns becomes
an issue during large displacements or significant changes in the surface a white-light
version of image correlation may help. Provided there is sufficient image texture from
details in the object the laser is replaced by a traditional light source and correlation
is based on the motion of image details. The resolution in this case is set by the
fineness of the image details.
DIC in either version is an established technique and has been applied repeatedly
also to tasks in artwork diagnostics. For on-site investigations the white-light version
provides a robust setup of sensitivity well in the µm-range. We used it, for example, in
the monitoring of the response of antique leather tapestry to changes in temperature
and humidity. Laser speckle instruments were used in the same project to determine
basic data of leather under mechanical and thermal loads [6].
In its primary form, DIC gives only the in-plane displacement data. It was shown,
however, that it can even provide a three-dimensional displacement vector. An anal-
ysis of the shape of the correlation peak or the cross power spectrum of the speckle
images under comparison provides the local tilt from which the out-of-plane dis-
placement can be calculated by integration [7]. The accuracy of the component thus
obtained, however, falls one order of magnitude short of the in-plane component.
We mentioned that decorrelation is of disadvantage in displacement mapping. On
the other hand, the reduction in the correlation coefficient can be used as a measure
for changes in the topography of a rough surface. These could be evidence for micro-
scale processes fuelling artwork deterioration. We have employed such decorrelation
analysis for various issues in artwork research [8]. Typical situations are the moni-
toring of salt crystals growing on historical murals or an estimate of the impact of
repeated water condensation on the historical substance in natural building stones.
Let us show the typical performance by another example.
Lasers are often used to clean artwork by ablation of dirt. Efficient monitoring
of the ablation process is needed to make sure that only the dirt is removed and
no damage is done to the invaluable substance underneath. For this purpose we
took speckle images of the surface under treatment for each laser shot and used the
decrease in the correlation coefficient to indicate the amount of matter removed. A
thorough analysis with varying surface models had to be carried out to quantify the
relation between average change in the surface profile and decrease in correlation [8].
Fig. 1 presents a set of correlation coefficients versus the number of laser shots in the
cleaning of a sandstone sample by green 400-mJ Nd:YAG-laser pulses. Our modelling
allowed us to assign an average removal of 70 nm to a correlation coefficient of about
0.1. The family of graphs is obtained by taking every second image as a new reference
image. The results show that the first pulse already removes about 70 nm; later
pulses, however, produce decreasing effects. In suitable object/dirt combinations we
262 K. D. Hinsch
Figure 1. Monitoring of dirt removal from a historic sandstone sample by speckle correla-
tion. Material is ablated by green Nd:YAG-laser pulses. The family of graphs is obtained
by using new reference images in the course of the process.
expect that the rate of ablation will change markedly when the underlying substance
is reached.
3 Video holography – mechanical response of historical murals

to sunshine
Displacements well below a micron can be detected by interferometric methods. This

is achieved by phase-sensitive recording of the speckle light with the aid of a refer-
ence wave in a setup for video-holography, mostly called Electronic Speckle Pattern
Interferometry (ESPI) [9]. Here, too, the object under investigation is illuminated
by laser light and imaged by a CCD-camera (Fig. 2). Now, however, a spherical
reference wave is superimposed via a beamsplitter producing an interference image
(image plane hologram) available for further processing in a computer. Subtraction
of successive images, for example, yields a system of so-called correlation fringes.
These are contour lines of constant displacement in the direction of a sensitivity vec-
tor k that is determined by the difference in illumination and observation directions.
For normal illumination and viewing, for example, k points into the out-of-plane
direction. In combining several optical setups of different geometry all three spatial
components of a displacement vector can thus be determined. The interpretation of
a single fringe system is ambiguous – it does not tell us the sign of the displacement.
Furthermore, jumps in the fringes that occur when discontinuities in the displace-
ment field are involved impede evaluation. To handle these problems several images
need to be recorded for each of which the reference wave has undergone a set phase
shift. Often three or four images at regular phase intervals are collected – a strategy
Figure 2. Optical setup for deformation measurement by video holography (Electronic

Speckle Pattern Interferometry – ESPI).
known from classical interferometry as phase shifting. Such a series of images allows
automated evaluation by a procedure called spatial phase unwrapping and provides
unambiguous deformation data [10].
ESPI may also be used in the measurement of amplitudes in sinusoidal vibrations
– a feature that we will use in the monitoring of loose plaster layers at murals. If we
assume that the vibration period is short compared with the recording time the signal
in the electronic camera is a time average over the interference signal at all phases.
Proper electronic or digital processing of this signal produces fringes contouring the
vibration amplitude.
To introduce the matter, outline the problems that need improvements, and il-
lustrate the type of data obtained we show some early results from a project where
traditional ESPI provided answers to urgent questions of the conservators. The work
concerned the role of solar irradiation in the decay of 19th-century murals in Wart-
burg castle of Thuringia, Germany. This castle is the famous place where Martin
Luther translated the bible into German around 1520. The legend says that he had
to fend off the devil by throwing his inkpot at him! A conventional ESPI system was
rigidly attached to the wall. It used laser-diode illumination and phase shifting by
successive piezo-electrically driven tilt of a glass plate in the reference wave. The ther-
mal load on the fresco was estimated by mapping deformations during cyclic heating
and cooling – sunshine being simulated by infrared irradiation. In the left part of
Fig. 3 we show the area of observation in the mural and at the right the deformation
field produced during a 2.5-minute period in a cooling-off phase. A characteristic
feature is a sudden kink in the displacement running through the field and coincid-
ing with an image detail in the painting. Obviously, such an abrupt change will be
accompanied by high local tensions in the material that will pose a threat to the
integrity of the substance – a good reason to ban all direct sunlight from the frescos.
The coincidence of the location of the displacement irregularity with the feature
line in the painting provided an interesting explanation for the discontinuity in the
264 K. D. Hinsch
Figure 3. ESPI study of the thermal response of a fresco in Wartburg castle, Thuringia,
Germany. Left: measuring field (width 6 cm); right: displacement map showing deformation
kink at the location of a former boundary of work-piece.
mechanical response. Here, two work pieces meet that the painter has produced
at different times. Frescos are painted onto fresh plaster and the artist scrapes off
unused plaster when he finishes a days work. Our measurement result suggests that
new plaster does not attach well to the old. The poor mechanical contact is a source
for future problems. 150 years after the frescos were painted we uncovered where the
artist made a break in his work – although he tried to hide it underneath the feature
line in the image!
This example illustrates a typical implementation of optical metrology in the mon-
itoring of artwork. Long-term changes in a specimen are difficult to register directly
because this would require a stable measuring device at the object for a very long
time. Rather, such changes are revealed in regular checkups by repeatedly exposing
the specimen to a standard load and studying any changes in its response.
4 New challenges for ESPI (electronic speckle pattern interferometry)
Our continuing optical activities at cultural-heritage objects revealed that early-day

ESPI needed substantial improvements to cope with the problems generally met in
the practical study of artwork. The quality of the measurements suffered from spuri-
ous signal fluctuations during observation and data acquisition that originated from
background vibrations, turbulence in the optical path or rigid-body misalignments.
Sometimes, the technique was just too sensitive for the process encountered, some-
times the deformation rate was too rapid to obtain correct phase-shifted data; often
the light source lacked coherence or was instable. Let us therefore turn towards more
refined techniques that take up such shortcomings and provide some novel innovative
approaches.
We have learned that a successful ESPI system requires provisions for phase shift-
ing. For each state of the object several frames are needed that have been taken at
a set of given phase differences between object and reference wave. The system used
at the Wartburg employed temporal phase shifting (TPS) where the phase shifts are
produced in succession by changing the optical path length in one optical branch.
This can be imposed by turning a glass plate, translating a mirror or stressing a
glass fibre in the optical delivery. Processing of the phase-shifted frames produces
a phase map mod 2π which is displayed in a saw tooth grey-level or pseudo-colour
representation.
During live observations of non-stationary objects like pieces of art in their ev-
eryday environment the conditions may change in time faster than allowed by the
time-out required for phase shifting. Even if the object deformation is sufficiently
slow, the measured phase is often deteriorated by air turbulences in the optical path
or by background vibrations. Therefore, schemes have been developed to obtain the
phase data simultaneously.
The most successful concept in which at least three phase-shifted images are
recorded on the same CCD-target in the camera is called spatial phase shifting
(SPS) [11,12]. For this purpose the source of the spherical reference wave originat-
ing in the aperture of the imaging optics (cf. Fig. 2) is given a small lateral offset
resulting in a linear increase of the phase along one direction on the target. This
offset must be adjusted such that the period of the carrier fringes resulting from in-
terference of object and reference wave equals three times the pixel pitch in the offset
direction. Then the reference-wave phase between adjacent pixels differs by 120 ◦
and the combination of data from three neighbouring pixels each gives the necessary
phase-shifted frames. These can be combined in the commonly used phase-shifting
algorithms to produce the mod 2π saw tooth pattern. For our purposes another eval-
uation method, the Fourier-transform technique [13], is more appropriate, because it
offers additional features as we will see soon.
Let us briefly describe this technique which yields the complex-valued (amplitude
and phase) light distribution in the image plane that can be utilized to calculate the
phase difference data of subsequent images needed to determine the displacement.
We mentioned the carrier fringes due to the superposition of object-light and off-axis
reference wave. Fourier-transformation of the CCD-image thus yields a zero-order
term and two side-band terms at the carrier frequency, both of which contain the
complex spatial frequency spectrum of the object light. Careful matching of pixel
data (size and pitch), speckle size and reference wave offset will guarantee non-
overlapping spectral terms and maximum free spectral range. Thus, any one of
the sideband terms can be separated for inverse Fourier-transformation to yield the
complex object-light distribution and thus the wanted object-light phase.
Let us demonstrate the superiority of spatial (SPS) over temporal (TPS) phase
shifting by observing a static deformation (point-like load at the centre of a mem-
brane) that is disturbed by background vibration (insufficient vibration insulation
of the setup) or hot turbulent air in the viewing path (Fig. 4). Obviously, TPS
(upper frames in Fig. 4) results in poor-quality saw tooth images when vibrations
cause wrong phase shifts and thus a loss of directional information (centre) or when
small-scale turbulence creates even locally varying phase shifts so that the correct-
266 K. D. Hinsch
Figure 4. Deterioration of the saw tooth phase maps in an ESPI deformation study under
stable experimental conditions (left) and disturbed by vibrations (centre) or air turbulence
(right). Performance of temporal phase shifting TPS (upper) versus spatial phase shifting
SPS (lower).
ness of the image is partly lost (right). Due to the greatly improved performance of
SPS (lower frames – under the same conditions) we decided therefore to implement
this arrangement whenever possible. Comparison of both the static images (left),
however, illustrates that under stable conditions SPS performs slightly inferior due
to residual fluctuating speckle phase over the three pixels compared [14].
For an overall displacement map characterizing the process under investigation the
steps in the mod 2π-maps have to be eliminated – a procedure called spatial phase
unwrapping. The usual way is to detect locations of the 2π jumps by comparing
neighbouring phase values and converting the step function into a continuous dis-
placement phase by adding the required integer multiples of 2π. This procedure is
carried out along suitable tracks in the image – thus the name spatial phase un-
wrapping. In the history of ESPI, effective unwrapping algorithms that are resistant
to a propagation of errors have been an important issue. They easily work in good-
quality data fields. Real-world objects like those we are concerned with in this article,
however, pose real challenges.
The problem can be nicely illustrated by the response of a piece of historic brick,
2 cm in thickness, to cyclic heating and cooling with an infrared radiator (Fig. 5).
The white-light image of the specimen, Fig. 5 left, already implies some difficulties
to expect. We see that a network of cracks divides the brick into numerous sub-areas
that probably each will execute an independent deformation. Indeed, the out-of-plane
displacement phase map mod 2π in Fig. 5 (centre) reveals several areas of irregular
boundaries that have undergone separate motion as indicated by the varying fringe
densities and orientations. For spatial unwrapping the areas would need identification
and separate evaluation – quite a laborious task. Even more, the saw tooth image
Figure 5. Mapping of out-of-plane displacements in a historic brick specimen due to

heat irradiation. Left: white-light image; centre: mod 2π phase map; right: displacement
obtained by temporal phase unwrapping.
does not render any information as to the relative heights in the sub-areas because
the absolute fringe order within each area is not known – we have no information
about the fringe count during the period between capturing images. Yet, this is
an important quantity in estimating the distribution of mechanical loads between
sub-areas in the specimen.
A solution to this problem is given by temporal phase unwrapping [15]. It makes
use of the rapid data rate available in recent image acquisition and processing equip-
ment. The phase history at every single pixel in the camera is stored – in combination
with SPS we now get saw tooth data versus time. When images are stored at a rate
excluding intermediate phase changes of more than ±π no ambiguous phase jumps
are encountered. Thus, we are not bothered by any irregularities in space and un-
wrapping even yields the relative displacements between the sub-areas. Let us prove
this by looking at the result in Fig. 5 right where the amount of displacement is en-
coded in grey level – ranging from -0.4 µm at the darkest to +3.4 µm at the brightest.
In such cases, an important question by restorers is whether the deformation in the
specimen is reversible and the object follows the cyclic load by cyclic motion. This
could, of course, be answered only on the basis of such absolute displacement data
as we have obtained them here.
The speed of a process in long-term investigations may differ considerably, e. g.,
when it is driven by the ambient climate as in many studies on historical objects.
In this case, the rate of image storage should be adjusted dynamically. It must be
high enough to obey the sampling theorem and as low as possible to save storage
space. Once more, temporal phase unwrapping offers a solution, because it provides
an instant fringe count. We have used this to trigger the instant of recording images
for an optimum number of fringes over the viewing field [16].
Deformation measurements by ESPI rely on the local correlation of the speckle
fields scattered from the object surface at different instants of time and are impeded
severely when the fields decorrelate. There are two main causes for such effects. The
speckle field is altered by the overall motion of the object (geometric decorrelation)
or it may change by the minute changes in the surface texture already covered ear-
lier [17]. Either kind of decorrelation will spoil the quality of the measurement and
limit the range of applicability.
268 K. D. Hinsch
Often, in-plane motion causes a displacement of the small interrogation areas that
are compared in the correlation. A straight-forward calculation with fixed coordinates
suffers from a mismatch because only part of the data within each area contributes
to correlation. This is especially pronounced in microscopic ESPI where areas of less
than a square millimetre are investigated. We had to develop means to cope with
this kind of geometric decorrelation. The Fourier-transform technique of handling
spatially phase-shifted data provides an elegant way to do so [18].
Recall that the Fourier-transform method re-establishes the complex object-light
distribution in the image plane from which we have so far used only the phase data.
Yet, we can compute also the intensity distributions that are ordinary speckle images
that we would get without the reference wave. Now, we can compare these images
by digital image correlation and obtain the in-plane displacement field yielding the
mismatch for each interrogation sub-area. The resulting values are used to backshift
one of the images for better superposition and then process the ESPI data on optimal
matching sub-areas. This method is known as adaptive windowing.
The improvement in the performance thus obtained is best illustrated by exam-
ples from microscopic ESPI. In the investigation of stone deterioration, for example,
researchers strive to understand how pressure from the crystallization of salts within
the porous stone contributes to the weakening of the material. With pore-sizes of
typically less than 100 µm deformation measurements request high spatial resolution
which can only be obtained under a microscope. For this purpose we have integrated
a commercial microscope of long viewing distance into an ESPI setup. Another appli-
cation is in the study of crack formation in historical paint layers. The famous Chinese
terracotta warriors of Lin Tong, for example, loose their invaluable paint cover almost
the moment they are excavated, because the originally moist paint layers break up
when getting dry. We participate in testing remedies for their conservation.
Fig. 6 was obtained in an ordinary ESPI-study of paint layers on terracotta samples
while the humidity was changed – a measuring field of size 230×230 µm2 is inspected.
The saw tooth pattern in Fig. 6 (left), obtained in the traditional way, shows useful
Figure 6. Elimination of geometric decorrelation in microscopic ESPI by adaptive win-

dowing. Object (230×230 µm2 ): painted terracotta (Chinese terracotta army) under the
influence of humidity. Left: original saw tooth pattern; centre: pattern improved by back-
shifted window; right: in-plane deformation vectors.
saw tooth fringes over certain areas, but contains several noisy regions void of fringes
because the underlying speckle fields decorrelate. With back-shifting according to
the strategy explained above the same data yielded the pattern of Fig. 6 (centre)
showing fringes also over most of the area that could not be evaluated before. Ob-
viously, the backshift data also give the in-plane displacement values – indicated by
small arrows – supplementing the out-of-plane data from ESPI (Fig. 6, right). It is
clearly seen how patches in the image that each can be attributed to a flake of paint
move individually. A few spurious displacement vectors are measurement errors and
would be eliminated by post-processing. Thus, a single ESPI record can now provide
the complete 3D displacement field – a task that usually needs three optical config-
urations of complementing sensitivity vectors. In case of little surface decorrelation
the in-plane component can be obtained with accuracy similar to the out-of-plane
component [18].
5 Explorations into the depth: low-coherence speckle interferometry
The optical tools introduced so far make use of light that has been scattered by the
specimen and carries mainly information about the location and micro-topography
of the surface of a sample. Any conclusions about what is happening in the bulk of
the object are indirect. Yet, many practical problems grow underneath the surface
of an object and it would be of advantage to have direct access to these regions.
As a typical example, take the detachment of paint and varnish layers in the Chi-
nese terracotta-army warriors already mentioned. It is assumed that this stratified
heterogeneous compound structure suffers damage because the various layers differ
in their mechanical response to the change in ambient humidity. When excavated
from the humid soil and moved into dry air, for example, a paint layer may shrink
differently from a primary coating or the carrier material. To test such assumptions
and provide for countermeasures by conservation agents it would be ideal to map
deformations also for various depths in the material.
Light can be used for this purpose if it penetrates deep enough into the material
and is sufficiently scattered backwards for detection. When thin paint or varnish
layers are involved these are typically only some 100 µm or less in thickness. Often,
there is a sufficient amount of light returning from these depths – especially from
interfaces – that can be used for metrological purposes. However, a method is needed
to discriminate the light according to the depth where it has been scattered. This
challenge can be met by making proper use of the coherence of light as in optical
coherence tomography (OCT). We have proposed a combination of OCT with ESPI
that we call low-coherence speckle interferometry LCSI [19].
The basic strategy is easily explained. In ESPI, object and reference wave that
are obtained by beam-splitting must superimpose coherently to preserve phase in-
formation in the CCD-images. Interference of light, however, is only possible when
the optical paths travelled by the waves do not differ by more than the coherence
length. Usually, researchers avoid worrying about this requirement by using laser-
light sources with a coherence length exceeding all scales involved. On the other
hand, low-coherence light – as from a super luminescence diode (SLD) of some 50 µm
270 K. D. Hinsch
Figure 7. Optical setup for low-coherence speckle interferometry LCSI.
in coherence length – imposes restrictions on interference experiments. With this

light source in combination with a proper design of the optics interference patterns
can arise only for signals that differ in path accordingly little and thus identify light
from a well defined layer in depth.
Fig. 7 explains the optical setup for LCSI. Light from the SLD is coupled into fibres
for reference beam and object illumination. While the reference beam is fed into the
ESPI optics as usual, the object light exiting from the fibre is collimated by a lens on
a translation stage to illuminate the object. The geometric arrangement in the setup
defines a thin “coherence layer” in space such that only light scattered within this
region contributes to the interferograms evaluated for displacement. Adjustment of
position and orientation of the object allows placing this layer in the desired position
within the object – at an interface between two paint layers, for example. With the
translation stage the coherence layer can then be scanned through the sample for
investigations at varying depths.
In practice, the useful interference signal has to compete with a large amount
of background light. Furthermore, the useful light has to travel in part through a
complex scattering medium that even changes between the instants of observation
due to the displacements in the object. Let us, for example, adjust the coherence layer
onto an interface between paint and terracotta in a fragment of a Chinese warrior.
We are interested in any motion of the interface during drying. On its way to and
from the interface, however, the light has to pass through the bulk of paint – a path
that quite probably will be influenced during drying. This produces uncorrelated
changes in the light and reduces the quality of the resulting fringes. Therefore, the
technique will find its limits at a certain depth that we are exploring presently.
For an estimate of the depth range available for exploration a model sample has
been studied (Fig. 8) [20]. It was prepared from a partly transparent adhesive (index
of refraction n ≈ 2) that is used in bonding aluminium compounds and that was
coated in steps of varying thickness onto a glass plate. The coherence layer was ad-
justed to the interface between adhesive and glass to observe its out-of-plane motion
due to a slight tilt of the specimen. Thus, we observe evenly spaced saw tooth fringes
Figure 8. Performance of LCSI through scattering layers of adhesive of different thickness

d. Tilt-induced saw tooth fringes for out-of-plane motion of the interface between a glass
carrier and the adhesive layer. Lower row: experimental saw tooth fringes; upper row:
theoretical fit yielding standard deviations given in rad.
that are parallel to the tilt axis and represent the displacement introduced. With
increasing thickness of the layer of adhesive from 127 µm (Fig. 8, left) to 254 µm
(Fig. 8, right) the quality of the fringes decreases due to decorrelation of the underly-
ing speckle signals. By fitting ideal fringe functions (shown above each result) to the
experimental data the standard deviation σ of the phase in radians is calculated as a
measure for fringe quality [11]. The increasing values for σ as given in each fringe set
indicate the evident loss in fringe quality with increasing thickness – the maximum
possible value is σ = 1.8 rad and occurs in a random noise pattern that would arise
with complete decorrelation. According to our results one can expect to perform
successful measurements for a layer thickness of up to a few 100 µm – subject to the
specific properties of the material involved.
Let us illustrate the potential of LCSI in an application during out-of-plane mea-
surements on paint layers of the Chinese warriors. Humidity effects were studied in a
terracotta fragment that carried a layer of varnish on top of a layer of paint. Thus, in
addition to the interface air/varnish at the surface a second reflecting interface was
located about 100 µm below the surface. By tuning the coherence layer onto either of
these interfaces we wanted to measure relative motions between these layers. Fig. 9
shows deformation fringes in the 1×1 mm2 sample when the system is tuned to the
surface (left) or to the interface (right). The figures give the response to a decrease
in ambient relative humidity from 90% to 80%.
The results from the surface indicate clearly that the sample is divided into many
small sub-areas that each react by a bowl-shaped deformation due to length changes
in the layers. The data originating from the interface at depth 100 µm are more dif-
ficult to read as they are noisier – a consequence of the passage of the light through
the covering layer. Yet, we see the same separation into bowls, much smaller in
deformation, however. A series of deformation maps allows obtaining mean displace-
ment values for both the layers versus measuring time during a cyclic change of the
humidity (Fig. 10). We verify the larger response at the top layer – which, of course,
includes also the displacement at the lower layer – and realize that there is practi-
cally no delay between the reactions of the interfaces. This might be explained by
unimpeded passage of humidity through a network of minute cracks separating the
bowls.
272 K. D. Hinsch
Figure 9. Humidity-induced out-of-plane motion as indicated by saw tooth fringes of the

surface (left) and an inner interface at depth 100 µm (right) in a layered coating on a Chinese
terracotta sample. Relative humidity changed from 90% to 80%.
In summary, LCSI is a promising tool to explore the deformation scene also within
a thin region below the surface of rigid objects. The depth available depends on
the optical properties of the material – mostly it will not exceed a millimetre. Since
action from an aggressive environment, however, has to penetrate layers immediately
adjacent to the surface their mechanical properties become especially important in
estimating possible damage.
Figure 10. Mean deformation of surface (top layer) and interface (lower layer) in the
layered coating on the Chinese terracotta sample of Fig. 8 during the cycle of relative
humidity also shown.
6 Sounding the depth by vibration ESPI
Many historical murals are painted on plaster layers of up to several centimetres in

thickness. In the course of time, such layers may detach from the supporting wall
– thus a check of the integrity of the interface is needed. Conservators usually in-
spect the condition of wall paintings using the so-called percussion technique, which
involves gently tapping the painting, section by section, and deducing from the acous-
tic response where the plaster is loose. At such locations it sounds “hollow”. Using
this method of inspection to plan the restoration of a large church is a cumbersome
task requiring complex scaffolding and involving a detailed mapping of the paintings
condition that can take months to complete. The obvious solution here would be to
develop a measuring technique that can be used to perform this inspection quickly
and automatically from ground level, allowing the experts more time to concentrate
on the affected areas and their restoration.
We have shown that low-coherence exploration of an object below its surface is
possible, but restricted to not much more than a millimetre in depth. Thus, in the
present case light can not be used directly to scan the depth for detachments and
we must develop other means. We can use the light, however, to probe the minute
response of loose areas to an acoustic-wave stimulus coming from a loudspeaker and
“sounding” the depth for an optical alert signal.
ESPI is a perfect tool for studying small vibrations [21] that we adapted to the mu-
ral problem [22]. In our setup (Fig. 11) an ordinary time average ESPI arrangement is
refined by modulation of the reference-beam phase with a frequency slightly displaced
from the loudspeaker signal. This has several advantages. In time-average interfer-
ometry the fringe function, i. e., the fringe brightness versus vibration amplitude,
follows the square of a zero-order Bessel function. As the slope of this function tends
to zero for zero amplitude the performance of the method is poor for small vibrations.
Reference beam modulation acts as bias amplitude and allows moving the operating
point in the fringe function to the place of maximum sensitivity. Furthermore, the
beat between reference and signal waves produces flickering light intensities at those
Figure 11. Time average ESPI-system for the study of detached layers in murals.
274 K. D. Hinsch
locations that take part in the vibration. This is a very intriguing feature because
it implies intuitively the state of “motion” – a feature important when advertising
to the community of restorers and conservators our high-tech method with difficult
to read results. Finally, several images captured during a beat cycle provide the ba-
sis for temporal phase shifting to yield automated evaluation of vibration amplitude
and phase. The final equipment in Fig. 11 is characterized by a fibre-optic reference
link which provides the basis for phase modulation (modulation of fibre length by a
PZT-driven cylinder) and, if required, allows path length matching by introducing
additional fibre. The coherence constraints, however, are low since we changed from
our early laser-diode illumination to a very stable CW Nd:YAG laser of many metres
in coherence length. Performance is improved by robust setups and averaging over
several images which allow doing on-the-site measurements of vibration amplitudes
of as little as a few nanometres.
The measurement strategy in mural investigations is to look for resonances while
tuning the excitation through an appropriate frequency band. For Fig. 12 the tech-
nique was tested at a specially prepared plaster layer on a stone wall that contained
an artificially produced region of detachment. This was created by interrupting the
mechanical contact between wall and plaster with a plastic foil. We show an am-
plitude map (left) and a phase map (centre) of a 230-Hz resonance mode in the
loose plaster layer. Many such results obtained at 10-Hz frequency steps from 90 Hz
to 580 Hz were finally accumulated to produce the final evaluation in the right of
Fig. 12. The grey level indicates how often a certain location had responded to the
excitation – dark areas vibrated frequently, bright ones rarely; an ordinary object
image is put in the background. The location and shape of the loose region are
nicely reproduced.
The new technique was put to test on frescos in a cemetery chapel at Kamenz,
Saxony. The adhesion of the layers of plaster covering the walls and ceiling was
examined one square metre at a time. The frequency of the sound was adjusted in
steps of ten Hertz, and the reaction of the wall to each sound was recorded. For
the evaluation it was again calculated how often an oscillation was detected for each
position on the wall. This time the data obtained was assigned colour values, so
Figure 12. ESPI-study of vibrations of an artificially produced detachment in a plaster

layer on a stone wall. Left: amplitude map of 230-Hz higher-order mode of the plaster plate;
centre: corresponding phase map; right: final evaluation of excitation response between
90 Hz and 580 Hz in 10 Hz-steps indicating the loose area (dark illustrates frequently, bright
rarely excited regions) – an ordinary object image in the background.
that all of the areas where there was no longer good adhesion to the substrate were
eventually displayed in yellow or red. Here, the new laser-optical technique passed
successfully when its results were compared to those obtained using the conventional
percussion method. It benefited from the advantage that the damaged areas shown
on the video image could be located precisely and automatically. Manual mapping
performed by a conservator, on the other hand, can easily contain errors that creep
in during the mapping process.
A famous example of where our method has been applied is the church of the
Benedictine Convent of Saint John at Müstair in Graubünden, Switzerland, which has
been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its medieval wall paintings.
In the 12th century, the original Carolingian frescos, which had been painted 300
years before, were covered by a new layer of plaster and a series of Romanesque wall
paintings. To roughen the surface in preparation for the new plaster, in parts even
holes were pounded in the Carolingian paintings. Nevertheless, the adhesion between
the older and the more recent plaster is poor in many places, which has caused parts of
the newer paintings falling off the wall. Using the laser-optical measuring technique,
it has been possible to identify large loose sections in many places, which can now be
kept under close observation by conservators. This is demonstrated in Fig. 13 that
shows the colour-coded result obtained from a wall in the south apse of the church.
Again, loose sections are those areas that vibrated often and thus are indicated by
red or yellow, the intact portions that could hardly be excited are coloured green to
blue. Contours of the paintings are overlaid to indicate the location in the mural.
At some points, it may be necessary to reinforce the connection between plaster and
substrate. One alarm signal would be if these damaged sections were to become
larger – possibly as a consequence of a minor earthquake that shook Graubünden
in 2001. This will now be confirmed by comparing the earlier data with data from
a repeat measurement. Here, an advantage over the traditional method of manual
testing is its objectiveness which is important in such a comparison.
Additional information from the vibration data can be utilized for more detailed
depth sounding. Thick layers respond at low, thin layers at higher frequencies. In a
multi-layer plaster this allows speculations about the depth of the damaged interface.
For an example, we present results of a study on a two-layer plaster coating at a
historical wall of the Neues Museum, Berlin that was checked for the success of a
remedy in which restorers had injected fixing cement through a certain number of
small holes. Preliminary studies at a location where the upper layer was missing
revealed that the lower layer responded mostly to frequencies below some 800 Hz.
Thus, we grouped our results into two maps, one considering all data below, the
other those above 800 Hz. In Fig. 14, hatching from upper left to lower right indicates
regions where the lower interface (response to frequencies below 800 Hz) is considered
loose; hatching from lower left to upper right indicates according regions for the upper
interface (frequencies above 800 Hz). The width of the scene was 0.9 m; the bright
dots give locations of cement injections. The results clearly show that the lower
interface was not repaired as we find one large vibrating region in the low-frequency
domain that includes the location of many of the fixation points. The response of
the thinner upper layer (indicated by the many small regions in the high-frequency
map) respects most of these points. Probably, the holes did not penetrate through
276 K. D. Hinsch
Figure 13. Map of loose areas in a Romanesque fresco of the south apse in St. John’s
Church of the World Heritage Site Müstair in Graubünden, Switzerland. Vibration ESPI
results indicate intact regions by green/blue, loose areas by red/yellow. Height of the scene
some 5 metres; the drawing describes the historical painting.
Figure 14. Localization of detachments in a two-layer plaster on a wall in Neues Museum,

Berlin. Results of a series of ESPI measurements at equidistant frequencies. Hatching from
upper left to lower right indicates regions where the lower interface (response to frequencies
below 800 Hz) is considered loose; hatching from lower left to upper right indicates according
regions for the upper interface (frequencies above 800 Hz). The bright dots give locations
of cement injections.
the second layer and the cement connected only the two layers, but did not attach
them to the wall.
7 Conclusions
Techniques of coherent optical metrology have proven well-suited for the investigation
of the mechanical processes involved in the deterioration of artwork. They offer the
necessary sensitivity to explore displacement fields and surface changes, and they
are non-invasive which is of essential importance in delicate historical pieces. While
the basic usefulness has been shown in various problems the metrology must now
be developed for general acceptance as a tool in the everyday tasks of restorers and
conservators.
Acknowledgements
This account is a summary of work that has been carried out mainly in the Applied
Optics Group at the Institute of Physics in Oldenburg. The dedicated contributions
of many members of the group throughout the years enter into the result which is ac-
knowledged gratefully. Since the very beginning G. Gülker and H. Helmers have been
involved in many of the studies. Special mention deserves the doctoral thesis work
of J. Burke, T. Fricke-Begemann and H. Joost, who have contributed essentially to
our progress in speckle metrology. Recent advances in LCSI are benefiting from co-
operation with K. Gastinger at SINTEF, Trondheim, Norway. We also acknowledge
the financial support from DFG, BMBF and DBU.
278 K. D. Hinsch
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‘Low coherence speckle interferometry (LCSI) for detection of interfacial instabilities
in adhesive bonded joints’, in Proc. SPIE vol. 5532 (SPIE, Bellingham, 2004), p. 256.
[21] S. Ellingsrud and G. O. Rosvold, ‘Analysis of a data-based TV-holography system used
to measure small vibration amplitudes’, J. Opt. Soc. Am. A9, 237 (1992).
[22] G. Gülker, K. D. Hinsch, and H. Joost, ‘Large-scale investigation of plaster detachments
in historical murals by acoustic stimulation and video-holographic detection’, in Proc.
SPIE vol. 4402 (SPIE, Bellingham, 2001), p. 184.
High-resolution Sagnac interferometry

K. U. Schreiber
Technische Universität München, Forschungseinrichtung Satellitengeodäsie,
Fundamentalstation Wettzell, 93444 Bad Kötzting
Email: [email protected]
Abstract. Ring lasers are the most important sensors for the measurement of rotation
when it comes to high stability and high sensor resolution. Their scale factor and hence their
sensitivity increases with the area enclosed by two counter-propagating laser beams. Over
the last decade a number of extremely large ring lasers were built, improving the sensitivity
and stability of the measured rotation rate by several orders of magnitude over previous
commercial developments. This progress has opened the door for entirely new applications
of ring laser gyroscopes in the fields of geophysics, geodesy and seismology. Ring lasers for
example are currently the only viable measurement technology, which is directly referenced
to the instantaneous rotation axis of the Earth. This document reviews the research carried
out by our international working group over the last decade and describes the current state
of the large-scale ring laser technology.
1 Introduction
Highly sensitive rotation sensors have many applications. They reach from applica-
tions in robotics over navigation up to high-resolution measurements in seismology,
geodesy and geophysics. The field of these applications is very broad and therefore a
wide range of different sensor types and specifications exists to satisfy these demands.
In order to understand the importance of rotation sensors one should keep in mind
that there are in total six degrees of freedom of movement, three for translations
and three for rotations, respectively. While the measurements of translation are
usually based on the determination of accelerations relative to an inertial test mass,
rotations can be established either by mechanical gyroscopes or they can be measured
absolutely by exploiting the Sagnac effect. Today fibre-optic gyros are the most
prominent representatives for passive optical Sagnac interferometers, while ring laser
gyroscopes represent the group of active Sagnac devices. They characterize the most
sensitive and most stable class of gyroscopic devices.
2 History of Sagnac interferometers
In 1881 A. Michelson set up an L-shaped optical interferometer and showed subse-

quently that no ether could exist, provided the ether is assumed to be at rest and is
280 Schreiber
not moving along with the Earth. In order to investigate the possibility of a dragged
ether, George Sagnac set up a different experiment. He generated a coherent beam
of light, which he guided around a contour with a predetermined area of 0.086 m2 .
The entire apparatus was then rotated with a frequency of approximately 2 Hz [1].
With the help of a beam splitter and several mirrors he managed to generate two
counter-propagating beams passing around the same optical path. He observed a
shift in the interferogram of 0.07 ± 0.01 fringes and found that the measured shift
was directly proportional to the rate of rotation. This observation, known as the
‘Sagnac Effect’ today, however would require an ether at rest and was in contradic-
tion with Michelson’s findings. As a result of both experiments the ether theory was
concluded.
A full description of the Sagnac effect is based on General Relativity [2], however
in this case a classical interpretation yields the same result [3]. The observed phase
difference is
8πA
δφ = n · Ω, (1)
λc
where A is the area circumscribed by the laser beams, λ the optical wavelength,
c the velocity of light, n the normal vector upon A and Ω the rate of rotation of
the interferometer. Equation (1) relates the obtained phase difference to the rate of
rotation of the entire apparatus and can be interpreted as the gyroscope equation [4].
Fibre-optic gyros (FOG) are modern representatives of this kind of optical gyro-
scopes. Because glass fibres with a length of several hundred meters are used, the
scale factor can be made very large by winding the fibre to a coil and the sensitivity
for rotational excitations is therefore much larger than for G. Sagnac’s experiment.
While the rotation rate of the Earth would have generated a fringe shift of as little as
1
300 on his historic instrument, which was well outside the range of sensitivity, Earth
rotation can be observed to about an accuracy of 10% even on relatively modest
FOGs. Based on the experiment of G. Sagnac it was possible to estimate the re-
quired size of an instrument capable of resolving an angular velocity of ≈ 50 µrad/s,
which corresponds to the amount of Earth rotation experienced at mid-latitude.
In this context the famous experiment1 of Michelson and Gale [5] in 1925 must
be viewed. Figure 1 shows a design draft of this experiment. A beam path in an
evacuated rectangular arrangement of pipes with a length of about 603 m by 334 m
was used for that purpose. The incoming coherent light beam was split into two
counter-propagating beams with the help of the beamsplitter A and then guided
around the contour A, D, E and F by three more mirrors. The rotation rate of
the Earth at the location of Clearing (Illinois) generated a shift of 0.23 fringes,
measured with an uncertainty of no more than 0.005 fringes. This corresponds to a
measurement error of only 2%. From a historical point of view it is very interesting
to note, that this concept contained a substantial experimental challenge. Since the
Earth rotation rate is absolutely constant at this level of sensor resolution, Michelson
and Gale had to prove that the observed fringe shift was indeed a measurement
quantity and not an artifact generated from multiple reflections in the interferometer
1
Please note that the goal was to measure a very small, nearly constant, angular velocity.
The experiment was not intended to proof Earth rotation as such.
Large ring laser gyroscopes 281
D C F
603 m
A B E
Figure 1. Sketch of the experiment of Michelson and Gale. The interferometer had a
length of 603 m and a width of 334 m.
itself. Therefore they integrated a second much smaller interferometer corresponding

to the contour A,B, C and D into their device, which created a negligible fringe
shift. A comparison between the two different fringe pattern provided the required
evidence.
3 Active Sagnac interferometers
In the days of coherent light sources it is possible to increase the sensor resolution
of a Sagnac interferometer substantially. In particular the transition from a phase
measurement to a frequency measurement promises a great improvement for the
sensor sensitivity. By placing a laser gain medium inside, a closed light-path set up
by three or four mirrors converts the apparatus into a laser with a ring cavity. Along
with the lasing condition that the perimeter P corresponds to an interger number i
of waves around the cavity, P = i · λ, one obtains the ring laser equation
4A
δf = n · Ω, (2)
λP
with δf the beat frequency, λ the wavelength of the optical beam, n the normal
vector on the area, and Ω the rate at which the entire apparatus rotates with respect
to the universe. This beat frequency is usually called the Sagnac frequency. In the
classical approach one can depict the co-rotating optical resonator as slightly larger
compared to the anti-rotating resonator. Therefore both optical beams are shifted
by the same small amount but in different directions away from the optical frequency
which both beams would have when the apparatus were at rest.
Ring lasers have several advantages. First of all there are no moving parts in the
design of this sensor. Secondly, they are sensitive to a very large range of rotation
rates, covering more than six orders of magnitude with a linear system response.
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These properties made them very welcome for applications in navigation. Compact
designs, made monolithically from blocks of Zerodur, were used to make ring lasers
of an area around 0.01 m2 . They are widely used in aircrafts [6]. The sensitivity of a
ring laser gyroscope mostly depends on the scaling factor, i. e. the ratio of the area
and the perimeter. Today, 80 years after the outstanding experiment of Michelson
and Gale, a number of gyroscopes have been built, which exceed the performance
of the historic instrument by approximately two million, while the corresponding
sensors are a lot smaller at the same time. This does not only allow one to measure
the rotation rate of the Earth ΩE , but it also readily shows small variations of this
quantity. Apart from a response of the Earth to external forces, these fluctuations are
resulting from a momentum exchange between the atmosphere, the hydrosphere and
the lithosphere. Therefore perturbations of Earth rotation can be used as an indirect
indicator for the monitoring of global phenomena, such as variations in global ocean
circulation.
4 Ring laser design
Atmosphere and hydrosphere make up a very small portion of the entire Earth mass
only. Therefore an extremely high resolution for any type of gyroscope is required to
access the information contained in these geophysical signals at a level of well below
10−7 . Apart from the actual sensitivity of the gyro also a remarkable sensor stability
is required. Some known periodic signals, such as the Chandler wobble, have periods
of around 432 days. Other such small-scale signals of interest are expected to be
aperiodic and one would wish to distinguish them clearly from sensor drifts. In order
to provide the required sensor stability it is desirable to make them mechanically as
rigid as possible. Furthermore the shape must not be affected by ambient temperature
and atmospheric pressure changes.
Figure 2. The C-II ring laser at the time of construction at Carl Zeiss (Oberkochen) at
the end of the year 1996. Photograph courtesy of Carl Zeiss GmbH, Oberkochen.
Figure 2 shows an example of such a construction. C-II is a second generation

Helium-Neon ring laser [7]. The body of the gyro is made from a slab of Zerodur,
18 cm thick. All four corners are bevelled and polished so that discs of ULE with
optically contacted super mirrors can be wrung onto the ring laser body in order
to generate a pre-aligned closed light path. The beam path itself is drilled into the
neutral plane of the Zerodur slab, parallel to the sides, so that an area of 1 m2 is
circumscribed by the laser beams. On one side, half way between the mirrors, there
is a cut-out in the ring body. A small adjustable capillary with a diameter of 4 mm is
placed in this gap. Two electrical loops around it act as an rf-antenna. They are used
to excite a gas discharge for laser excitation. A similar cut-out on the opposite site,
closed up with a 12 mm wide pyrex tube, is also integrated into the design for future
experimental purposes. There are also two diagonal holes drilled through the entire
ring laser structure. A UHV-valve located in the center above the Zerodur block
seals the cavity off from the environment. This valve can be connected to a turbo
pump in order to evacuate the ring cavity. Subsequently to the pumping, a mixture
of Helium and Neon can be applied to fill the entire inner part of the construction
with a few mbar of total gas pressure. The design of these ring lasers was chosen
such, that the quality factor of the cavity, Q, was made as large as possible. There
are no Brewster windows or mode selecting devices contained in the entire setup [8].
Together with the very low loss from the mirrors (≈ 20 ppm per mirror) a Q on the
order of 1012 and higher is achieved for all the rings. The cavity quality factor Q,
defined as Q = ωτ , was established from decay-time measurements. High values for
Q result in a narrow linewidth of the laser and, equally important, in a much reduced
systematic offset of the Sagnac frequency from its true value due to the lock-in effect.
Essentially all large ring lasers built by the German-New Zealand collaboration
follow the same design principle. They are He-Ne gas lasers with rf excitation, op-
timized for low loss operation. Since all viable active Sagnac interferometers have
to operate on a single longitudinal mode per sense of propagation, all the devices
are operated near the laser threshold. A free spectral range (FSR = c/P ) between
2.4 MHz and 75 MHz would otherwise allow many different longitudinal modes to
oscillate. The cross-section of the capillary used for laser excitation together with
the radius of curvature of the mirrors determines at which transversal mode laser
oscillation comes on. Preferably all rings operate on TEM-0,0.
Figure 3 shows the G ring laser during an upgrade of the vacuum tubing in 2006.
The dimensions of G are 4 m by 4 m and up to today this is the most stable and most
sensitive sensor. While the smaller rings C-II and G are of monolithic construction,
UG-1 (367.5 m2 ) and UG-2 (833 m2 ) are much too large for that. Therefore they have
a heterolithic design. The corners of these ring lasers, the laser gain section and the
connecting vacuum tubes are resting on small pedestals around the perimeter of the
Cashmere Cavern in the northern slope of the Banks Peninsula south of Christchurch
in New Zealand. Figure 4 gives an impression about the construction of these very
large rings.
Since ring lasers are also very suitable sensors for the monitoring of rotations
induced by earthquakes, a simplified version of an active Sagnac interferometer was
constructed in order to provide a relatively cheap but still sensitive device to the seis-
mological community. As there is no real need for long-term stability, this GEOsensor
284 Schreiber
Figure 3. The G ring laser during an upgrade of the vacuum system at the Geodetic
Observatory Wettzell in 2006.
Figure 4. Illustration of the heterogeneously constructed UG2 gyroscope. Many small

concrete foundations on the floor of the Cashmere cave support the ring laser structure.
does also not require Zerodur for the interferometer body. The application of ring
lasers to seismology is covered in more detail in Sect. 7.
In order to summarize the basic performance of all important large rings, Table 1
lists all relevant quantities from these instruments. Apart from area and perimeter,
the key figures for the scaling factor, the table also lists the obtained Sagnac splitting
of the optical frequency as well as the best short-term sensor resolution obtained
from these devices. It should be noted that all rings are orientated horizontally on
Ring Laser Area, m2 Perimeter, m fSagnac , Hz ∆Ω/ΩE

C-II 1 4 79.4 1 · 10−7
GEOsensor 2.56 6.4 102.6 1 · 10−7
G0 12.25 14 288.6 4 · 10−7
G 16 16 348.6 1 · 10−8
UG1 366.83 76.93 1512.8 3 · 10−8
UG2 834.34 121.435 2177.1 5 · 10−8
Table 1. Summary of physical properties of a number of large ring lasers.
the Earth with the exception of G0, which is located vertically along an east/west
wall. For this table only one parameter, namely the theoretical sensitivity, has been
regarded. This does not necessarily mean that the performance is readily obtained at
all times. The enhanced scaling factor comes on the expense of mechanical stability
and also a faster degradation of the laser gain medium over time. In order to draw
conclusions from ring laser measurements with respect to global geophysical signals
it is important to rigidly connect the interferometer to the Earth crust. Naturally
it is easier to do that with larger constructions. However, a heterolithic structure
inside an artifical cave suffers substantially from thermo-elastic deformations and
atmospheric pressure variations. The following section looks at the various error
mechanisms of ring lasers in more detail.
5 Sensor resolution
According to Refs. [4, 15] and also others the sensitivity limit of a ring laser gyroscope
from the irreducible quantum noise for a rotation measurement is given by
r
cP hf
δΩ = , (3)
4AQ Px t
where P is the perimeter, A the area encircled by the light beams of the gyro, Q = ωτ
the quality factor of the ring cavity, h is Planck’s constant, Px the beam power loss
corresponding to the photon flux on the photodetector and t the integration time.
For the large ring laser G in Germany P = 16 m and A = 16 m2 . The ring-down
time was first measured to be τ = 1 ms in 2001. Over the years it reduced to a value
of τ = 500 µs in 2007 due to gradual mirror degradation. Figure 5 shows the current
quantum limit for G as a function of the respective integration time. Currently G
reaches a sensitivity of 10−12 rad/s at an integration time of approximately 1000
seconds, which is believed to be a world record.
All these ring lasers are very large compared to an aircraft gyro. The optical
path length varies between several meters and 121.44 m. With total cavity losses at
the level of 108 parts per million, this translates into a very narrow linewidth. The
theortically expected Schawlow-Townes linewidth for G is
N2 2πf0 ∆νc
∆νL = , (4)
N2 − N1 PL
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10-11
Rotation Rate [rad/s]

10-12
10-13
101 102 103 104 105
Time [s]
Figure 5. Computed quantum noise limit and measured sensor resolution for G. The sensor
almost reaches the shot noise limit.
with a width of the cavity resonance of
1−R
∆νc = ∆FSR √ . (5)
π R
Using ∆FSR = c/L = 18.75 MHz and R = 0.999892 one obtains ∆νc ≈ 645 Hz and
hence ∆νL ≈ 275 µHz. Since a He-Ne laser is a 4-level system one may expect to
set N1 ≈ 0 which assumes full inversion. For an industry type He-Ne laser with a
capillary diameter of 1-2 mm and a moderate excitation current this assumption is
certainly true. However, our lasers use wider capillaries with 4 mm (C-II), 5 mm (G)
and 6 mm (UG2) diameter. This slows down the wall-collision induced de-excitation
of the Neon atoms from the 1s state. As a result the laser gain reduces substantially
and, by the process of electron-Neon collision, pumping leads to a an increase of N1 ,
a reduction of the inversion [3, 16], and consequently to an increased linewidth. In
the absence of any variations of the scaling factor according to Eq. (3) one obtains a
constant lower limit for the gyro resolution, which then is only depending on fluctu-
ations of the laser beam power in the cavity. A typical value for the stability of the
beam power due to mode competition of 0.01% over a time period of about 1 hour
has been observed from intensity measurements in G.
In order to investigate the mid-term stability of large ring lasers, Fig. 6 shows an
Allan deviation plot of most of the lasers specified in Table 1. One can see that the
monolithic constructions are more stable than the heterolithic structures. This is
not unexpected. Compared to UG1, C-II experiences much more perturbations from
backscattering and comes with a much smaller scale factor. The performance of UG2
on the other side falls off despite the enhanced scale factor. This may be due to the
rectangular sensor layout or comes with the increased arm length of the instrument.
G0 as the only vertically mounted ring laser does not have the mechanical stability
to perform well. Actually this prototype ring laser construction was only intended
to test the feasibility of heterolithic ring laser designs. The GEOsensor is designed
10-4
G0
rel. Allan Deviation

10-5
UG2
-6
10
C-II
UG1
-7
10
G
10-8
101 102 103 104 105
Time [s]
Figure 6. Relative Allan deviation of most of the large ring lasers of Table 1. One can see
that UG2 is less stable than UG1. This may be due to the rectangular shape or the scale
factor was pushed beyond the practical limit for this type of construction.
specifically for studies in the field of rotational seismology, where long-term stability
is not a design criterion.
6 Error contributions
Several mechanisms in a real world ring laser cause a departure of the actually mea-
sured Sagnac frequency from the theoretical value. In a much generalized form one
can write
∆f = KR (1 + KA )n · Ω + ∆f0 + ∆fbs , (6)
where KR = 4A/λL is the geometrical scaling factor of an empty ring laser cavity.
The quantity KA accounts for the additional contributions due to the presence of an
amplifying laser medium, while ∆f0 allows for mode pulling and pushing because of
dispersion, and ∆fbs takes the coupling of the two laser beams in the presence of
backscatter into account [9]. These latter two effects are well established in the ring
laser literature (e. g. [10, 11]) and are usually both very small and almost constant
for the ring lasers discussed here. Ring laser applications in geodesy and geophysics
require ultimately stable and highly sensitive sensors with a demand for a relative
sensor resolution of ∆Ω/ΩE < 10−8 . Therefore it is important to understand the
nature and variability of these error contributions.
6.1 Non-reciprocal effects in the laser cavity

For an ideal ring laser both of the two counter-propagating laser beams would be
identical with respect to beam size and intensity. However in practise there is a
noticeable difference in the beam intensities for all of the large ring lasers. Differences
in the intensities of more than 20% have been found for C-II, and even G shows a
beam power difference of more than 10%. The reason for that is not fully understood
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and it is currently believed that the respective mirror coatings exhibit some minute
non-isotropy, causing the cavity Q to be different for the two senses of propagation.
For a model accounting for dispersive frequency detuning and hole burning [12] the
bias due to the corresponding null shift offset becomes

c ξ Zi (ξ)
∆f0 = · L(ξ) G · ∆I , (7)
2P η Zi (0)
with ξ the cavity detuning from line center, Z(ξ) the imaginary part of the dispersion
function, G the gain, and ∆I the observed difference in intensity. Equation (7) also
shows that it is very important to keep the gain constant, which is very difficult for a
gas laser in the presence of gain medium degradation through outgassing inside the
cavity.
6.2 Backscatter coupling

In the presence of strong backscattering, light of one sense of propagation is coupled
into the beam travelling into the opposite direction. According to Ref. [9] the beat
frequency disappears if the experienced rotation rate falls below a threshold value of
√
cλ2 rs
ωL = . (8)
32πAd
A is the area enclosed by the cavity, d the diameter of the beam, and rs the amount
of backscatter contribution of the mirror. In the most general case the shifted beat
frequency then becomes
4A
q
∆f = 2 ,
ω 2 − ωL (9)
λP
where ω is the experienced rate of rotation of the gyro. For ring lasers of the size
of C-II or smaller, ωL can be of a significant amount, however far from locking up
with the Earth rate as the only source of rotation, while neither G nor any of the
UG ring lasers ever showed much evidence for the presence of backscatter at all. For
this situation the contribution to backscatter is best expressed as
c
∆fbs = (ρ2 sin(ψ + 2 ) + ρ1 sin(ψ + 1 )) , (10)
2P
where 1 and 2 are the respective backscatter phase angles and ρ1 and ρ2 the corre-
sponding backscatter amplitudes. Following Ref. [12] one can write
r r
rs λ I1 rs λ I2
ρ1 = , ρ2 = , (11)
4 d I2 4 d I1
with I1 , I2 the respective intensities of the two beams. As one can see from Eqs. (10)
and (11) together, the effect of backscattering reduces with growing size of the cav-
ity and lower scattering amplitude. In particular, the reduction of backscattering
through a limited acceptance angle of the solid angle where all the light was scat-
tered into, seems to be a very effective process.
282.800
Split-mode Sagnac [Hz]

282.750
282.700
282.650
282.600
282.550
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2
Time [day 304 in 2002]
Figure 7. Earth strain changes the perimeter in UG1. The black dots show the variation
in the FSR, while the line represents the expected variations from a global strain model.
An additional linear term accounts for the increase of temperature in the Cashmere Cavern
over the course of these measurements.
6.3 The effect of Earth strain on large cavities
Large ring laser cavities such as UG1 and UG2 are subject to Earth strain effects
caused mainly by the gravitational attraction of the moon. The deformation in
response to the lunar gravitational pull stretches the cavity with an amplitude of
about 20 nanostrain, which adds up to a total of approximately 1.5 µm for UG1,
thus changing the geometrical part of the scale factor 4A/λP by a small amount. In
the absence of any shear forces these strain effects will change both the perimeter
and the area of the ring laser at the same time. Since the perimeter has to contain
an integer number of waves (P = Iλ) in order to maintain lasing, the scale factor can
be reduced to (I/4) for a square ring, where I is the longitudinal mode index. This
means that in this case all the changes in the area and perimeter are compensated
by a corresponding shift in the optical frequency of the laser, provided that the shift
is less than one free spectral range and the laser mode does not change. While this
self-compensation is strictly speaking only valid for a true square ring, one can find
that it also applies to near square rings.
Figure 7 gives an example from UG1. For the purpose of this measurement UG1
was operated on 2 neighbouring longitudinal modes per sense of propagation. The
beat note between these two modes ∆f = c/P ∼ = 3.9 MHz corresponds to the free
spectral range and is a direct measure of the effective length of the cavity. The
beat frequency was down-converted to an audio signal of about 288 Hz with the help
of a GPS controlled reference oscillator and continuously recorded with an A/D-
converter and a computer. While the black dots in Fig. 7 represent the variation
of the length of the cavity expressed as a shift of the measured FSR, the red line
gives the corresponding FSR shift computed from an Earth strain model. In order
to account for an upward drift of the ambient temperature in the Cashmere Cavern
over the course of the measurements an additional linear drift term was added. A
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n2
n C*
n1
D
C
A B
Figure 8. Determination of the orientation of a non triangular ring laser. While n rep-
resents the orientation of the square ABCD, a non-planar ring has to be subdivided into
triangles, which then have to be summed up.
good agreement between the model and the FSR measurements is found, while the
scale factor variations coming from the strain effects are not visible in the time series
of the Sagnac frequency.
6.4 Geometric scale factor correction

The two monolithic smaller ring lasers and their monuments are geometrically very
stable and beamwalk effects have not been observed so far. In contrast the very large
ring lasers UG1 and UG2 are subject to deformations of the Cashmere Cavern as
a result of thermoelastic strain and atmospheric pressure variations. Small mirror
tilts in the laser beam steering cause changes in area and perimeter. This results
in a drift of the geometrical scaling factor and the normal vector of the respective
ring laser. Other systematics come from the fact that the gyroscopes are He-Ne gas
lasers and therefore they suffer from a continuous degradation of the laser gas purity
caused by outgassing from the cavity enclosure. As the laser gain reduces with time
a substantial drift of the measured Sagnac frequency develops. The obtained beat
frequency from a ring laser gyro is proportional to the scaling factor, the rotational
velocity and the orientation of the area normal vector and the vector of rotation as
shown in Eq. (2). The normal vector on the plane of the laser beams is well defined
for a triangular ring only.
Since most of the very large ring lasers existing to date have a square or rectan-
gular shape, one needs to modify the definition of orientation for these instruments.
Figure 8 outlines the procedure. On the assumption of a square ring laser completely
planar along the corners ABCD, one finds the normal vector n representing the entire
area. If however one corner (C∗ ) is slightly tilted out of plane, the effective area may
be obtained by subdividing the full area into triangles and projecting the normal
vector ni of each triangle onto the vector of rotation and summing them up.
Nearly all the large ring lasers mentioned in Table 1 are orientated horizontally
on the Earth. Because Earth rotation is the most dominant measurement signal,
they show a strong latitude dependence of Ωeff = sin(φ + δN ), with φ corresponding
to the latitude of the instrumental site and δN representing a tilt towards North.
East-west tilts are nearly negligible, since the cosine of an angle representing a small
tilt towards East δE ≈ 0 is so close to 1 that it can be neglected, except for strong
seismic motions.
4 cam 3 3
1
4 1
d1 = 39.703 m
d2 = 21.015 m
3 2
cam 2
1
1
cam 1
1 2
Figure 9. Basic layout of the UG2 ring laser. The laser beams are steered around the
cavity by mirrors with precise mounting on the corner monuments.
UG2 has a rectangular layout spanning an area of 39.703 m by 21.015 m. The

basic design is shown in Fig. 9. Because of the long beam trajectories of 39.703 m and
21.015 m of the laser, small mirror tilts in the range of a few seconds of arc are causing
already a noticable beam displacement on the next mirror. Since this corresponds
to a change in the geometric scale factor, the beamwalk was monitored and the
instantaneous area and ring laser orientation (relative to the ring laser hardware
structure) was computed. By placing a CCD camera behind the mirrors at the
locations 1–3 indicated in Fig. 9 and recording the light leakage of the laser beam
through the mirrors, beamwalks on the order of a micrometer in displacement could
be monitored. Measurements were conducted by averaging over 4000 individual
images taken one after the other, with the maximum supported exposure time of the
cameras of 8 ms. Figure 10 shows a sample measurement sequence of the movement
of the beam spot center postion with time. In this particular dataset the excursion of
the horizontal position of the laser beam is two times larger compared to the vertical
movement. On other occasions both movements were of the same proportion.
Since the determination of scale factor variations are required with a relative pre-
cision of 10−9 one can expect a substantial improvement from the geometrical scale
factor correction. After the alignment of the UG2 ring laser to optimize it for mini-
mum losses, and after the laser was refilled with a clean supply of Helium and Neon,
a measurement sequence of approximately two weeks was started on Dec. 30, 2005
and lasted until Jan. 15, 2006. The Sagnac frequency was recorded with an inte-
gration time of 30 minutes. Figure 11 shows the measurement sequence of raw data
as recorded on the logging system. From the experimental setup, one would expect
292 Schreiber
80.0
70.0
60.0
horizontal
Beamwalk [µm]
50.0
40.0
30.0
20.0
vertical
10.0
0.0
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5
Time [days]
Figure 10. Example of the measured beam wander as obtained at corner 1. Within a
factor of two vertical and horizontal excursions are roughly of the same magnitude.
Earth rotation to produce a constant Sagnac frequency, with a variation of 1 mHz or

less. However the measurements show an overall downward trend and superimposed
systematic excursions of considerable amplitude, where some occur rather sharply,
while others are following a much smoother course. Some of these departures from
the value of Earth rotation are due to variations of the scale factor as a function of
time while others are caused by internal processes in the laser cavity.
From the instantaneous beam postions recorded by the cameras the geometrical
variation in area and perimeter can be computed via an ABCD-Matrix approach.
Figure 12 shows the result. One can see that the area is changing at the parts
per million level, certainly a considerable effect. The simultaneously displayed time
-5
∆f [mHz]
-10
-15
-20
-25
0 4 8 12 16
Time [days in 2006]
Figure 11. Time series of the drift of the raw measurements of Earth rotation obtained
from the UG2 gyroscope.
3.0 1030
2.0 1020
Atmospheric Pressure [hPa]

Variation in Area [*1e6]
1.0 1010
0.0 1000
-1.0 990
-2.0 980
-3.0 970
0 4 8 12 16
Time [days in 2006]
Figure 12. Time series of the variations in effective ring laser area superimposed with the
atmospheric pressure at that time.
series of the atmospheric pressure as measured inside the cavern shows significant
correlation with these changes in area. From that one may conclude that pressure
induced deformations of the cave are causing small tilts at the mirror mounts, which
in turn cause beamwalk on the next mirror. A similar result is obtained for the
instantaneous orientation of the UG2 ring laser as shown in Fig. 13. The contributions
from ring laser reorientation are smaller by a factor of about two compared to the
variations in area. Nevertheless the corrections to the orientation vector are also in
the parts per million regime and can not be neglected. Again there is some correlation
with the atmospheric pressure evident as well as a linear overall trend. As opposed to
orientation and area, the computed perimeter changes are approximately six orders
of magnitude smaller as shown in Fig. 14. This is compatible with the general
observation that longitudinal mode index changes are infrequent.
1.0 1030
Variation in Orientation [ * 1e6]
1020
0.0
1010
-1.0
1000
-2.0
990
-3.0
980
-4.0 970
0 4 8 12 16
Time [days in 2006]
Figure 13. Time series of the variations in effective ring laser orientation superimposed
with the atmospheric pressure.
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14.0 1030
12.0

1020
∆ Perimeter [*10e12 m]
10.0
1010
8.0
1000
6.0
990
4.0
2.0 980
0.0 970
0 4 8 12 16
Time [days in 2006]
Figure 14. Time series of the variations of the UG2 ring laser perimeter superimposed
with the atmospheric pressure.
Finally the complete instantaneous geometrical scale factor was computed as a

function of time for the entire period of the measurements. One can see from Fig. 15
that the changes amount to several parts per million for UG2. This certainly can
not be ignored for the analysis of ring laser measurements of Earth rotation. Similar
measurements on the monolithically constructed G ring laser suggest that the scale
factor variations from beamwalk are at least two orders of magnitude smaller and
outside the range of resolution of the available cameras. When the computed correc-
tions are applied to the UG2 raw data (Fig. 11) the excursions reduce substantially
as shown in Fig. 16. As a result one can see that the amplitude of the departures
from the expected Earth rotation rate have reduced substantially but they have not
completely disappeared. Furthermore there is a strong systematic downwards drift in
the Sagnac frequency contained in the residuals of the corrected measurements. The
0
∆ K [ppm]
-1
A
-2
-3
-4
0 4 8 12 16
Time [days in 2006]
Figure 15. Time dependence of the variation of the ring laser scale factor over the period
of the measurements.
-5
∆f [mHz]
-10
-15
-20
0 4 8 12 16
Time [days in 2006]
Figure 16. Time dependence of the variation of the ring laser scale factor over the period
of the measurements.
systematic trend suggests that this unwanted signal may be introduced by the decay
of the laser gain medium due to changes in dispersion as addressed in Section 6.1.
6.5 Scale factor corrections from varying laser gain

Apart from a major disruption around day 13 there is only a systematic downward
drift roughly of the form −et left in the data set. The existence of such a distinct
systematic feature suggests the presence of an independent bias mechanism in a ring
laser cavity. The residual downward trend is most likely due to a contamination of
the laser gas with hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and water vapour via outgassing from
the cavity enclosure and gives rise to an additional time dependent loss factor in the
gain medium. This effect has been observed in a different context for linear He-Ne
lasers, see Refs. [13, 14]. UG2 with a stainless steel tube enclosing the laser gas along
the entire perimeter of 121.435 m experiences a substantial amount of outgassing. On
two occasions measurements of the total gas pressure inside the cavity were made,
each over a period of 56 days. An overall increase of 0.022 mbar and 0.020 mbar of
hydrogen, amounting to 4 · 10−4 mbar H2 per day was observed, taking the UG2 ring
laser well into the regime where additional losses from absorption effects by hydrogen
become visible. Because of the need of adjusting large ring lasers to single longitudinal
mode operation near laser threshold, a feedback circuit is used to stabilize the gain
medium to constant circulating beam power. Growing losses in the laser cavity
therefore will raise the loop gain accordingly. Following the approach of Ref. [10] the
quantity KA describes the contribution of the active medium to the scale factor of a
large ring laser gyro as

∆KA ∆K aG
= − + N L(Ω) . (12)
KA K N 1 + xPo
In this equation ∆KA /KA corresponds to the scale factor correction due to the
active laser medium, (∆K/K)N is the constant part of the scale factor correction,
the second term on the right-hand side allows for laser gain related contributions
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and the last term accounts for nonlinear contributions such as backscatter-related
coupling, which are neglected in the following discussion.
Usually, the gain factor G is considered constant with respect to time in ring
laser theory. However, for the reasons outlined above, one has to account for the
progressive compensation of gas impurity related losses by setting for example
G = G0 eαt . (13)
This choice of G is arbitrary and motivated from the behaviour of the loss as shown
in Ref. [13]. The beam output power of Eq. (12) in the required form for large ring
lasers with an 1:1 isotope mixture of 20 Ne and 22 Ne becomes

G κ1 Zi (ξ1 ) + κ2 Zi (ξ2 )
Po = 2Is Ab T · −1 , (14)
µ Zi (0)
with Is the saturation intensity, Ab the beam cross section and T the transmission
of the laser mirrors. Zi is the imaginary part of the plasma dispersion function with
lasing at a frequency detuning of ξn with respect to the corresponding line centers of
the two Neon isotopes, each having a partial pressure of κ1 and κ2 , respectively. The
most important part in this equation is the factor G/µ, which represents the gain–
loss ratio. This factor is approximately constant over the time of the measurements
because of the feedback loop operation. Since there is no drift in the optical frequency
involved, the contribution of the plasma dispersion function also remains constant.
Therefore, the denominator in Eq. (12) can be approximated by 1 + xPo ∼ = 1 so that
this equation reduces to

∆KA ∆K
= − aG0 eαt . (15)
KA K N
Applied to the dataset of Fig. 16 one obtains a corrected dataset as shown in Fig. 17
after a nonlinear fitting procedure is performed. The result from Fig. 17 outlines the
best mid-term performance obtained from UG2 so far.
6.6 Ring laser orientation

The Sagnac frequency in Eq. (2) contains contributions from three distinctly dif-
ferent mechanisms. Most obviously it relates the experienced rotation rate with the
frequency difference observed between the two senses of propagation in the ring laser.
Variations of the scale factor modify the proportionality between rotation rate and
observed Sagnac frequency. The inner product between the normal vector on the
ring laser plane and the vector of rotation finally determines how much of the rota-
tion rate is projected onto the ring laser. For a large instrument rigidly attached to
the ground and monitoring the Earth rotation rate this means, that any changes in
orientation between the ring laser and the instantaneous Earth rotation vector show
up in the Sagnac frequency.
Solid Earth tides and diurnal polar motion cause such orientation changes. A
detailed description is given in Refs. [21, 22]. The direction of the Earth’s rotation axis
varies with respect to both Earth- and space-fixed reference systems. The principal
6.0
4.0
2.0
∆f [mHz]
0.0
-2.0
-4.0
-6.0
0 4 8 12 16
Time [days in 2006]
Figure 17. Time series of the UG2 Earth rotation measurements after the correction for
geometrical scale factor variations as well as variations in gain from outgassing in the cavity.
component with respect to the Earth-fixed frame is the well-known Chandler wobble,
with an amplitude of 4–6 m at the poles and a period of about 432 days. This is a
free mode of the earth, i. e., it would still be present in the absence of the external
gravitational forces. It is believed that the Chandler wobble would decay due to
dissipative effects in the Earth’s interior, were it not continually excited by seismic
activity and by seasonal variations to atmosphere and ocean loadings. The Chandler
wobble is overlaid by daily variations whose amplitudes are an order of magnitude
smaller, some 40–60 cm at the Earth’s surface [17, 18]. These wobbles arise from
external torques due to the gravitational attraction of the Moon and Sun. Since the
Earth is an oblate spheroid with an equatorial bulge which is inclined to the plane
of the ecliptic, the net gravitational torques of the Moon and Sun on different parts
of the Earth’s surface do not exactly cancel out as it would be the case if the Earth
were a perfect sphere. In an Earth-fixed reference system, such as that of a ring
laser fixed to the Earth’s surface, the forced retrograde diurnal polar motion is best
viewed as a principal mode – the so-called “tilt-over mode” (K1 ) – with the period of
exactly one sidereal day (23.93447 hours), whose amplitude is modified as the angles
and distances between the Earth, Moon and Sun vary over the course of their orbits.
The complete spectrum of nutation modes can be understood as the beat frequen-
cies of the tilt-over mode with frequencies corresponding to relevant orbital param-
eters: half a tropical month, half a tropical year, the frequency of perigee etc. The
beat periods are clustered around one sidereal day. The O1 and P1 modes, with beat
periods of 25.81934 and 24.06589 hours, have the largest amplitudes after the K1
mode, and arise from the change in angle between the Earth’s equatorial bulge and
the Moon and Sun respectively (see Ref. [19] for basic theoretical details.). Figure 18
shows an example of such a measurement series from G. The data in the diagram
was reduced by subtracting the mean value of the Sagnac frequency from the dataset
in order to give a better representation of the amplitude of the diurnal polar motion
signal. The theoretically expected polar motion signal, visible as a north/south tilt
of the Earth rotation vector, was computed from a model [20] and is also shown in the
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100
50
∆f [µHz] 0
-50
-100
360 365 370 375
Time [days in 2006]
Figure 18. Time series of the variations of the Earth rotation measuremets of G after the
mean value of the rotation rate has been subtracted.
diagram. While the phase of the theoretical polar motion signal agrees well with the
measurements, there remain small deviations in amplitude. Since the model assump-
tions are based on a simplified deformable Earth one may expect that eventually a
better insight into the Earth interior may gained.
However, before this goal can be addressed it is necessary to get a better control
of the different bias mechanisms of large ring lasers, which were mentioned several
times before. While the diurnal polar motion can be understood as a wobble of the
Earth rotation axis, laser gyros also experience tilts from solid Earth tides. These
signals occur at a period of half a siderial day and have amplitudes of up to 40 nrad in
Wettzell. For the ring lasers in Christchurch one can see additional tilts from ocean
loading, which make this effect approximately 3 times larger [21]. Figure 19 shows
a spectrum of the ring laser measurements of G taken without interruption over a
80
∆f = 50 nHz
60
Hz]
-12
40
PSD [•10
20
0
8 12 16 20 24 28 32
Frequency [µHz]
Figure 19. Spectrum of the G ring laser taken from a dataset as long as 243 days. The
major signals for diurnal polar motion and solid Earth tides are clearly visible.
100
50
∆f [µHz]
0
-50 Kyrill@Wettzell
-100
15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
Time [days in 2007]
Figure 20. Time series of G measurements taken over a week around the storm “Kyrill”
in January 2007. When Earth tides and diurnal polar motion are removed from the data, a
distinct transient feature remains in the dataset.
period of 243 days. Both the main contributors to the daily polar motion signals and
the solid Earth tides show up clearly. They agree with the literature values to within
the spectral resolution of the measurement of 50 nHz.
Apart from these known and expected signals there are also non-periodic signatures
in the time series of the ring laser, which cannot be unambiguously identified at this
point in time. Figure 20 shows such an example. The displayed dataset was taken
over 7 days around the storm “Kyrill”, which struck central Europe on the 18th of
January, 2007. One can see the diurnal polar motion and solid Earth tides signal,
which look very similar to Fig. 18. The second graph in the diagram shows the
same dataset with these known components removed. A very distinct signal remains
with a maximum on the day after the low pressure area had passed over Europe.
Neither the signal itself nor the time delay has been understood so far. For a better
illustration the actual time at which the storm passed over the gyroscope is also
marked on this plot. Apart from crustal deformation and strain effects due to wind
friction causing either tilt or some sort of local rotation also sensor internal artifacts
may be responsible for such sensor responses and the investigation of these transient
effects is still ongoing.
7 Application in seismology
With the availabilty of large ring lasers geophysical rotations became accessible at
a global scale and at various timescales [23]. In particular rotation signals from
teleseismic events became measurable for the first time [27, 29]. A specific project on
rotational seismology, funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research
(BMBF) within the geotechnology program, made the construction of a large ring
laser for seismological studies possible. Results from this project eventually led to the
300 Schreiber
formation of a new working group on rotational seismology.2 A more detailed report

on the application of ring lasers for rotational seismology is given in [26, 34–36].
7.1 Detection of seismic signals

The range of angular velocities to be covered in this application is very wide, i. e.
10−14 rad/s ≤ Ωs ≤ 1 rad/s, with the required frequency bandwidth for the seismic
waves in the range of 3 mHz ≤ fs ≤ 10 Hz [33]. Currently large ring lasers are
the only available rotation sensors which meet these demands. Three such devices
mounted in orthogonal orientations may eventually provide the quantitative detection
of rotations from shear, Love and Rayleigh waves. It is important to note that ring
laser gyroscopes are sensitive only to rotations around their area normal vector. At
the same time they are completely insensitive to translational motions. From that
point of view they provide additional information and may also be very useful to
separate between tilt and translations, a persisting problem in seismology.
The goal of the GEOsensor project was the construction and evaluation of a field-
deployable demonstrator unit, which eventually will provide access to all six degrees
of freedom of motion. The recording of the (complete) earthquake-induced rotational
motion is expected to be particularly useful for (1) further constraining earthquake
source processes when observed close to the active faults [30]; (2) estimating per-
manent displacement from seismic recordings [32]; (3) estimating local (horizontal)
phase velocities from collocated observations of translations and rotations [26]. Be-
cause of the relatively short duration of an earthquake such ring lasers do not need a
long-term stability over weeks or months, which is difficult and expensive to obtain.
An instrumental stability of approximately one hour during a seismic event is suf-
ficient. Therefore it is possible to use a steel structure attached to a solid concrete
platform as the main components of the Sagnac interferometer.
As indicated above, ring lasers for seismic studies require a high data rate of at
least 20 Hz, because of the wide bandwidth of seismic frequencies near an earthquake
source. While large ring lasers for geodetic applications are usually optimized for
measuring variations in the rotation rate of the Earth in a frequency band well below
1 mHz, autoregressive algorithms can be used to determine the Sagnac frequency with
a resolution below the Nyquist limit. While this method can still be employed for
the strongly bandwidth limited teleseismic signals [28], an entirely different detection
scheme is needed for the data evaluation of regional or local seismic events.
Unlike seismometers, the concept of a Sagnac interferometer is not based on mass
inertia. As a consequence ring lasers have no moving mechanical parts. This has the
advantage that there is no restitution process required for the extraction of the true
ground motion from the transfer function of the measurement device. In order to
distinguish true measured ground rotations from possible unknown sensor artifacts,
two independent ring lasers, namely C-II and UG1 (see Table 1), were collocated
and operated at the same place. C-II is placed inside UG1 and the area normal
vectors of both ring laser planes are collinear. According to the ring laser equation
the relationship between the obtained Sagnac frequency and the input rotation rate
2
See http://www.rotational-seismology.org
600
400
200
rot. rate [nrad/s]

0
-200
-400
-600
1350 1355 1360 1365
Time [s]
Figure 21. Comparison of two ring laser seismogramms from the the same mag. 7.7 earth-
quake near Fiji on August 19, 2002. Both ring lasers were located in the same place with
identical orientation. Apart from the higher noise level of the smaller instrument the record-
ings are identical.
is linear over a wide dynamic range. A mag. 7.7 earthquake near the Fiji Islands on
August 19, 2002 was recorded simultaneously on both ring lasers. Figure 21 shows
the record of the first 15 seconds of this earthquake. The measured raw Sagnac
frequency as a function of time was converted to rotation rate in nano-radians per
second using Eq. (2). Apart from this conversion the data has not been modified in
any way. The dataset from the C-II ring laser is a little noisier than the data from
UG1 because there is almost a factor of 20 difference in the respective scale factors.
Nevertheless one can see that both ring lasers measure exactly the same signal in
phase as well as in amplitude.
Ring lasers provide optical interferograms where the external rate of rotation is
proportional to the rate of change of the fringe pattern. This signal becomes available
as an audio-frequency at the output of a photomultiplier tube, which is a major
difference to the amplitude variations typically recorded by seismometers.
In seismology it is important to detect the rate of change of the Sagnac frequency
at 50 ms intervals (20 Hz) very accurately. Since frequency counting techniques do
not provide a sufficient resolution at such short integration times, a frequency demod-
ulation concept has been developed. A voltage controlled oscillator is phase locked
to the Sagnac frequency of the ring laser, exploiting the fact that Earth rotation pro-
vides a constant rate bias in the absence of any seismically induced rotation signals.
In the event of an earthquake one obtains the rate of change of the Sagnac frequency
at the feedback line of the voltage controlled oscillator. This voltage can be digitized
and averaged at the required 20 Hz rate or higher.
Currently the upper limit for the detectable rate of change from a large ring laser
is not set by the sensor itself but by the frequency extraction process. To outline the
importance of the frequency demodulation technique two earthquakes with distinctly
different properties are compared. Figure 22 shows an example for a teleseismic
event and an example from a much closer regional earthquake. While for the remote
earthquake the spectral power density essentially drops off to zero above frequencies
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36
36
M = 8.3
27 D ≈ 8850 km
18
PSD [*10 (rad/s) /Hz] 9

2
0
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2
8
16
M = 5.4
6 D ≈ 400 km
0
0 1 2 3 4 5
Frequency [Hz]
Figure 22. Comparison of recorded rotation spectra from an teleseismic event (Hokkaido:
Sept. 9, 2003) and a regional earthquake (France: Feb. 22, 2003). The much higher
bandwidth of the rotational wave spectra requires alternative data acquisition techniques
such as the demodulator.
of 0.1 Hz, one can still see some signal signature up to about 4 Hz for the regional
event. Frequencies with a rate of change above 2 Hz, however, are already outside the
regime of reliable representation in phase and amplitude by conventional frequency
counting and second-order autoregression frequency analysis [28].
Figure 23 illustrates some basic characteristics for the detection of rotations from
seismic signals. The diagram shows most of the measurement range of interest for
seismic studies. The relevant frequency window is plotted horizontally, while the
10-5
10-6 Fiber Optic Gyro
France (5.4)
10-7
Rotation Rate [rad/s]
10-8 Sumatra (9.3)
Algeria (6.8)
10-9
10-10
10-11
Figure 23. Sensor resolution of
different rotation sensor concepts
10-12 in relation to the observed signal
strength of some earthquakes at
Ring Laser
10-13 different epicentral distances.
0.001 0.01 0.1 1 10
Frequency [Hz]
348.80
348.70
Sagnac frequency [Hz]

348.60
348.50
348.40
348.30
361.05 361.1 361.15
Time [days in 2004]
Figure 24. The raw rotation measurement of the mag. 9.3 Sumatra earthquake from De-
cember 26, 2004. The dataset was recorded with a good signal to noise ratio.
magnitude of the respective rotation rates is displayed on the vertical. In order to

keep this diagram simple the strong motion region is not shown. In the lower part
of the plot one can see a line, which indicates the resolution limit for current ring
lasers. Depending on the actual scale factor the sensitivity differs from one ring laser
to another. However within the scale of this chart this line gives a good representation
for the existing large ring lasers in general. Current
√ high quality fibre-optic gyros
(FOG) exhibit a sensor resolution of δϕ = 0.1◦ / h or slightly less. The upper line
was derived from test measurements of a sample FOG type: µFORS-1 manufactured
by LITEF GmbH in Germany. Both lines are sloping over the frequency range of
interest. This reflects the improvement resulting from longer integration time as the
frequency of interest reduces.
To give an idea of the actual sensor requirement, three very different example
earthquakes are indicated on the graph. The details of these earthquakes are given in
Table 2. Since the Earth crust acts as a lowpass filter one can see that the earthquakes
at the right side of the Fig. 23 plot are the closest. All events listed here produced
datasets with good signal to noise ratio on the G ring laser. Figure 24 shows the
rotational seismogram of the mag. 9.3 Sumatra event as an example. None of these
events would have been within the sensor resolution of a FOG at larger distances.
As Fig. 23 clearly indicates the application of FOGs for seismic studies is currently
only possible for strong motion applications.
source magnitude distance

Sumatra 9.3 > 10000 km
Algeria 6.8 1550 km
France 5.4 400 km
Table 2. Details of some earthquakes recorded in Germany by rotational sensors.

304 Schreiber
7.2 The ring laser component

In order to obtain a stable interferogram of the two laser beams the cavity length has
to be kept constant to within a fraction of a wavelength. Therefore usually ring laser
bodies are made from Zerodur, a glass ceramic which exhibits a very small relative
thermal expansion of α = 5 · 10−8 K−1 . Since a ring laser for seismic applications
requires an enclosed area of more than 1 m2 a monolithic ring construction would
both be too expensive and not transportable.
Figure 25 gives an impression of the actually realized ring laser hardware. Again
the laser cavity has the shape of a square. The 4 turning mirrors are each located
in a solid corner box. As shown on the right side of the plot, a folded lever system
allows the alignment of each mirror to within ±10 seconds of arc. This high level of
alignment is required to ensure lasing from an optically stable cavity. The mirrors
are located inside steel containers which in turn are connected up with stainless steel
tubes, forming a vacuum recipient around the laser beam path. In the middle of one
side the steel tubes are reduced to a small glass capillary of 4 mm in diameter and a
length of 10 cm, which is required for gain medium excitation. When operated, the
ring laser cavity is first evacuated and then filled with a mixture of Helium and Neon
reaching a total gas pressure of approximately 6 mbar. The left part of Fig. 25 gives
an impression of the instrumental layout. The following two important considerations
are unique for the GEOsensor design.
• Since the ring laser is constructed from several components, it requires a stable
concrete platform as a base at the location of deployment. Such a pad is simple
to specifiy and can be prepared totally independent of the actual GEOsensor
deployment.
• The actual area of the ring laser component is not predetermined by the design.
The instrument can be built according to the available space at the respective
host observatory. Different GEOsensor realizations may therefore have different
sizes and consequently different instrumental resolution. The length of the
current instrument is 1.6 m on a side, which provides an area of 2.56 m2 .
Figure 25. The basic construction layout of the GEOsensor ring laser
location frequency [Hz]

Wettzell (49.145 N) 138
Pinon Flat (33.6 N) 102
Tokyo (35.4 N) 106
Cashmere (43.57 S) 127
Table 3. Earth rotation bias for some possible GEOsensor locations.
In order to operate the GEOsensor the cavity must be evacuated, baked and filled
with a Helium-Neon gas mixture. This procedure requires a turbo molecular pump
system and a manifold with a supply of 4 He, 20 Ne and 22 Ne. The pump system is not
required during the operation of the GEOsensor but is necessary for the preparation of
the instrument and once or twice during a year in order to change the laser gas. Laser
excitation itself is achieved via a high-frequency generator, matched to a symmetrical
high-impedance antenna at the gain tube. A feedback loop maintains the level of
intensity inside the ring laser and ensures monomode operation. When the ring laser
is operated it detects the beat note caused by Earth rotation. The magnitude of
this beat frequency is depending on sin(Φ) with Φ being the latitude of the ring
laser location. Table 3 shows the value of the Earth’s rate bias for a few locations of
interest. Until today the GEOsensor was operated at the first two locations only.
7.3 Deployment of the GEOsensor

After the development of the GEOsensor and including a test installation at the
Geodetic Observatory Wettzell, the instrument was shipped to the Scripps Institution
of Oceanography in San Diego, California. In January 2005 the installation of the
complete sensor took place at the Seismological Observatory Pinon Flat as shown
in Fig. 26. The site is located between the San Jacinto and the San Andreas fault.
The goal of this installation is the measurement of a number of earthquakes at short
distances. This will allow an extensive and systematic study of rotational motions
Figure 26. The ring laser vault under construction at the Pinon Flat (Ca) observatory
and the GEOsensor installation in one of the chambers.
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mag. 3.23
Demodulator Signal [V]

1.790
1.780
1.770
0 50 100 150 200 250

Time [s]
Figure 27. Example of a regional seismic event recorded on the GEOsensor in Pinon Flats.
on all scales with a particular emphasis on local and regional scales with source
distances of up to 100 km. From the calculation of theoretical seismograms for all six
degrees of freedom of motion, it became apparent that rotational motion information
may contribute the most for the investigation of local and regional earthquakes. One
example out of many of the recorded seismic events in Pinon Flat is shown in Fig. 27.
The basic sensor concept is well suited for the desired application.
7.4 Observations of rotations

Currently there are primarily two types of measurements that are routinely used
to monitor global and regional seismic wave fields. Standard inertial seismometers
measure three components of translational ground displacement and provide the
basis for monitoring seismic activity and ground motion. The second type aims
at measuring the deformation of the Earth (strains). It is well known that there
is a third type of measurement that should be observed in seismology and geodesy
in order to fully describe the motion at a given point, the measurement of ground
rotation.
In fact, Aki and Richards [24, 25] have demanded to use rotations for more than
20 years, but due to the lack of suitable sensors this has not been done in the past.
The recording of the (complete) earthquake-induced rotational motion is expected
to be useful particularly for (1) further constraining earthquake source processes
when observed close to the active faults [30]; (2) estimating permanent displacement
from seismic recordings [32]; (3) estimating local (horizontal) phase velocities from
collocated observations of translations and rotations. As will be shown below, the
consistency of broadband ring laser observations of the vertical component of rotation
rate observed for distant large earthquakes is readily obtained. Furthermore one can
model the observations with numerical simulations of the complete rotational wave
field in a three-dimensional heterogeneous global Earth model.
In order to compare translations (measured by a standard seismometer) with the
vertical component of the vector of rotation – which is what the G-ring is measur-
ing – the horizontal components of seismic recordings were rotated into radial and
transverse directions. Note that Rayleigh waves should not generate such a vertical
rotation component, while Love waves are horizontally polarized, hence generate ro-
tations around a vertical axis only. To obtain transverse acceleration, the transverse
velocity seismograms were differentiated with respect to time. Under the assumption
of a transversely polarized plane wave with displacement u = (0, uy (t − x/c), 0)
and the horizontal phase velocity c, the vector of rotation (curl) is obtained as
1 1 x

2 ∇ × u = 0, 0, − 2c u̇y (t − c ) with the corresponding z-component of rotation rate
1
Ωz (x, t) = − 2c üy (t − xc ). This means that at any time rotation rate and transverse
acceleration are in phase and the amplitudes are related by üy (x, t)/Ωz (x, t) = −2c.
In practise, the phase velocities can be estimated by dividing best-fitting waveforms
in sliding a time-window of appropriate length along the seismic signal and rotation
rate. Thus, under the plane-wave assumption both signals should be equal in phase
and amplitude [27, 29]. This assumption is expected to hold for a considerable part
of the observed ground motion due to the large epicentral distance compared to the
considered wavelengths and source dimensions. This property is exploited here to
verify the consistency of the observations. Close to the seismic source this assumption
no longer holds and may form the basis for further constraining rupture processes [30,
31]. A data example (rotation rate and transverse acceleration) of the mag. 8.1
Tokachi-oki event on September 25, 2003, and a time-dependent normalized cross-
correlation coefficient (maximum in a 30 s sliding window) is given in Fig. 28. The
time window also contains an event (increase in cross-correlation at 3500 s) that was
barely visible in the seismograms without correlating the two signals.
When the waveform fit between rotation rate and transverse acceleration is suf-
ficiently good (e. g., a normalized correlation coefficient >0.95), one can estimate
phase velocities by dividing the peak amplitudes of both traces as explained above.
These time dependent estimates of phase velocities are shown in Fig. 28 (bottom).
Despite the scattering of the phase velocities in the time window containing the
Love waves (9000-10000 s and around 14000 s for the aftershock) the estimates are in
the right range of expected phase velocities and the negative slope of the velocities
with time suggest that the expected dispersive behavior (earlier longer periods have
higher phase velocities) can be observed in the data using this processing approach.
The lack of correlation in the time windows excluding the Love waves may indicate
that either the (body-) wave fronts are not planar or that the energy comes from
out-of-plane directions through scattering. It should be noted, that such results are
obtained constistently.
8 Summary
Large ring lasers have come a long way over the last decade. In the 1994 the con-
struction of C-II was met with a lot of skepticism. From the initial sensor stability of
only 0.1% with respect to Earth rotation, C-II moved quickly to a domain of better
than 1 part in 106 . In 1997 a concept for an even larger ring laser, G, was proposed
for the first time. Then it was not even known if such a cavity would allow single
mode operation at all, a prerequisite for the operation of a Sagnac interferometer.
308 Schreiber
−8 Event 6 : hokkaido − #268−2003 − Tmin=10 s

x 10
4 WET
Rot. rate (rad/s)

G
2
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2

Time (s) 4
x 10
Max Cross−corr. norm.
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2

Time (s) 4
x 10
15000
Est. Phase Vel. (m/s)
10000
5000
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2
Time (s) 4
x 10
Figure 28. Top: Observation of rotation rate (upper trace) and transverse acceleration
(lower trace) after the mag. 8.1 Tokachi-oki event, 29-9-03. Middle: The cross-correlation-
coefficient in a 30 s sliding window. Note the increase in correlation during the main shock
(>7500 s) and aftershock (>13800 s) to almost 1 (perfect match). Bottom: Estimates of
horizontal phase velocities in time windows with good phase match (> 9500 s). Note the
decreasing phase velocities in the Love wave train (e. g., 8000-10000 s, indicative of Love
wave dispersion). This diagram was kindly provided by H. Igel.
This led to the construction of the first cheap stainless steel construction, namely
G0. The only objective was to achieve mono-mode operation. However to the sur-
prise of everybody, G0 could be operated as a gyroscope comparatively easily. This
achievement laid the foundations for G, the most sophisticated and well designed
ring laser of all, shifting the limit of gyroscopic sensor resolution well beyond 1 part
in 108 . Encouraged by this result larger and larger ring lasers were built, demon-
strating their viability for the application in this new field of high resolution Sagnac
spectroscopy. A lot of technical problems had to be overcome, which in hindsight
appeared to be obvious. Today it seems that G has reached the limit of sensitiv-
ity which is practically possible for a gyroscope attached to the Earth. The sensor
stability has been improved from stable operations at the scale of minutes about 10
years ago up to many days today. As this lane is pursued further more and more
geophysical signals with longer periods are expected to become visible, which even-
tually may make significant contributions to the field of space geodesy. Furthermore
a number of exciting results from the studies of rotational seismology are expected
from Sagnac gyroscopes.
Acknowledgements. This project review could have had more than six co-authors easily.
However that was impractical to coordinate in the available time. I have to take respon-
sibility for the statements made and and the balancing of the items presented. Appropri-
ate reference is given to earlier publications covering the various aspects of the ring laser
project in more detail. The combined ring laser results were possible because of a collab-
oration of Forschungseinrichtung Satellitengeodäsie, Technische Universität München, Ger-
many, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand Bundesamt für Kartographie
und Geodäsie, Frankfurt, Germany and the Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität, München, Ger-
many. The GEOsensor was funded under the program GEOTECHNOLOGIEN of BMBF
and DFG, Grant 03F0325 A-D. University of Canterbury research grants, contracts of the
Marsden Fund of the Royal Society of New Zealand and also grants from the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) are gratefully acknowledged. Special thanks go to my col-
leagues Heiner Igel, Geoffrey Stedman, Robert Hurst, Jon-Paul Wells, Clive Rowe, Robert
Thirkettle, Thomas Klügel, Alexander Velikoseltsev, Manfred Schneider, Benedikt Pritsch,
Wolfgang Schlüter and Robert Dunn for their contributions.
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310 Schreiber
[18] V. Frede and V. Dehant, ‘Analytical verses semi-analytical determinations of the Op-
polzer terms for a non-rigid Earth’, J. Geodesy 73, 94 (1999).
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Wiltshire, ‘Direct measurement of diurnal polar motion by ring laser gyroscopes’, J.
Geophys. Res. 109, B06405 (2004), doi:10.1029/2003JB002803.
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of Ring Lasers as Local Earth Rotation Sensors’, Surveys in Geophysics 22, 603 (2001).
[24] K. Aki and P. G. Richards, Quantitative seismology, 1st ed. (Freeman and Company,
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[25] K. Aki, P. G. Richards, Quantitative seismology, 2nd ed. (University Science Books,
Sausalito, CA, 2002).
[26] H. Igel, K. U. Schreiber, B. Schuberth, A. Flaws, A. Velikoseltsev, and A. Cochard,
‘Observation and modelling of rotational motions induced by distant large earthquakes:
the M8.1 Tokachi-oki earthquake September 25, 2003’, Geophys. Res. Lett. 32, L08309
(2005), doi:10.1029/2004GL022336.
[27] D. P. McLeod, G. E. Stedman, T. H. Webb, and K. U. Schreiber, ‘Comparison of stan-
dard and ring laser rotational seismograms’, Bull. Seism. Soc. Amer. 88, 1495 (1998).
[28] D. P. McLeod, B. T. King, G. E. Stedman, K. U. Schreiber, and T. H. Webb, ‘Autore-
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ations and Noise Letters 1, R41 (2001).
[29] A. Pancha, T. H. Webb, G. E. Stedman, D. P. McLeod, and K. U. Schreiber, ‘Ring laser
detection of rotations from teleseismic waves’, Geophys. Res. Lett. 27, 3553 (2000).
[30] M. Takeo and H. M. Ito, ‘What can be learned from rotational motions excited by
earthquakes?’, Geophys. J. Int. 129, 319 (1997).
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[32] M. D. Trifunac and M. I. Todorovska, ‘A note on the usable dynamic range of accelero-
graphs recording translation’, Soil Dyn. Earth. Eng. 21, 275 (2001).
[33] K. U. Schreiber, A. Velikoseltsev, G. E. Stedman, R. B. Hurst, and T. Klügel, ‘Large
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[34] K. U. Schreiber, H. Igel, A. Velikoseltsev, A. Flaws, B. Schuberth, W. Drewitz, and
F. Müller, ‘The GEOsensor Project: Rotations - a New Observable for Seismology’, in
Observation of the Earth System from Space (Springer, 2005), pp. 427 – 447.
[35] K. U. Schreiber, G. E. Stedman, H. Igel, and A. Flaws, ‘Rotational Motions in Seismol-
ogy: Theory, Observation, Simulation’, in Earthquake Source Asymmetry, Structural
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(Springer, New York, 2006), Chap. 29.
[36] A. Cochard, H. Igel, B. Schuberth, W. Suryanto, A. Velikoseltsev, K. U. Schreiber,
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Theory, Observation, Simulation’, in Earthquake Source Asymmetry, Structural Media
and Rotational Effects, edited by R. Teisseyre, M. Takeo, and E. Majewski (Springer,
New York, 2006), Chap. 30.
Charge-ordering phenomena
in one-dimensional solids
Martin Dressel
1. Physikalisches Institut, Universität Stuttgart
Pfaffenwaldring 57, 70550 Stuttgart, Germany
Email:[email protected]
Abstract. As the dimensionality is reduced, the world becomes more and more inter-
esting; novel and fascinating phenomena show up which call for understanding. Physics
in one dimension is a fascinating topic for theory and experiment: for the former often a
simplification, for the latter always a challenge. Various ways will be demonstrated how
one-dimensional structures can be achieved in reality. In particular organic conductors
could establish themselves as model systems for the investigation of the physics in reduced
dimensions; they also have been subject of intensive research at the Dritte Physikalische
Institut of Göttingen University over several decades.
In the metallic state of a one-dimensional solid, Fermi-liquid theory breaks down and spin
and charge degrees of freedom become separated. But the metallic phase is not stable in one
dimension: as the temperature is reduced, the electronic charge and spin tend to arrange
themselves in an ordered fashion due to strong correlations. The competition of the different
interactions is responsible for which broken-symmetry ground state is eventually realized in
a specific compound and which drives the system towards an insulating state.
Here we review the various ordering phenomena and how they can be identified by dielectric
and optic measurements. While the final results might look very similar in the case of a
charge density wave and a charge-ordered metal, for instance, the physical cause is com-
pletely different. When density waves form, a gap opens in the electronic density-of-states
at the Fermi energy due to nesting of the one-dimension Fermi-surface sheets. When a
one-dimensional metal becomes a charge-ordered Mott insulator, on the other hand, the
short-range Coulomb repulsion localizes the charge on the lattice sites and even causes
certain charge patterns.
1 Introduction
Although the world is three-dimensional in space, physics in one dimension has al-
ways attracted a lot of attention. One-dimensional models are simpler compared to
three-dimensional ones, and in many cases can be solved analytically only then [1].
Often the reduction of dimension does not really matter because the essential physics
remains unaffected. But there are also numerous phenomena in condensed matter
which only or mainly occur in one dimension. In general, the dominance of the lat-
312 Martin Dressel
tice is reduced and electronic interactions become superior. Quantum mechanical

effects are essential as soon as the confinement approaches the electronic wavelength.
Fundamental concepts of physics, like the Fermi liquid theory of interacting particles
break down in one dimension and have to be replaced by alternative concepts based
on collective excitations [2]. The competition of different interactions concerning the
charge, spin, orbital and lattice degrees of freedom can cause ordering phenomena,
i. e. phase transitions to a lower-symmetry state as a function of temperature or some
order parameter. In one dimension, fluctuations strongly influence the physical prop-
erties and smear out phase transitions. An interesting task now is to approximate
one-dimensional systems in reality and check the theoretical predictions. Besides
pure scientific interest, the crucial importance of these phenomena in nanotechnol-
ogy might not lie too far ahead.
2 Realization of one-dimensional systems
2.1 Artificial structures

The ideal one-dimensional system would be an infinite chain of atoms in vacuum;
close enough to interact with their neighbours, but completely isolated from the
environment. Over the past years, significant progress has been made towards the
realization of one-dimensional atomic gases, based on Bose-Einstein condensates of
alkalides trapped in two-dimensional optical lattices [3]; however, besides other severe
drawbacks, only a limited number of investigations can be performed on quantum
gases in order to elucidate their properties.
In solids one-dimensional physics can be achieved in various ways. The most
obvious approach would be to utilize semiconductor technology. There layers can
be prepared by atomic precision, using molecular beam epitaxy that leads to a two-
dimensional electron gas at interfaces and quantum wells [4]. Employing electron-
beam lithography and advanced etching technology, one-dimensional quantum wires
are fabricated with an effective width comparable to the wavelength of the electrons
(Fig. 1). Besides the enormous technological effort, the disadvantage of this approach
is that these structures are embedded in bulk materials and not easily accessible to
further experiments.
If the surface of a single crystal, like silicon, is cut in a small angle with respect
to a crystallographic direction, terraces are produced on the surface with mono-
Figure 1. One-dimensional semiconductor quantum wells for GaN lasers (electron micro-
graphs provided by H. Schweizer, Stuttgart). (a) The ridge waveguide covers an area of
1000 µm×6 µm; (b) the second-order grating has a period of 190 nm.
Charge order in one-dimensional solids 313
Figure 2. Realization of metallic nanowires: The silicon surface is cut in a certain angle
leading to single atomic steps; the width of the terrace depends on the angle. Evaporated
gold assembles itself in such a way that atomic wires are formed along the steps.
atomic steps separating them. The surface reconstruction may lead to an anisotropic
arrangement with the possibility of one-dimensional structures. When a metal, like
gold, is evaporated on top of it, the atoms will organize themselves in rows along
these steps as visualized in Fig. 2. Taking care of the surface reconstruction and of
the right density of gold eventually leads to chains of gold atoms separated by the
terrace width [5]. This is a good model of a one-dimensional metal which can be
produced in large quantities, easily covering an area of 1 × 1 cm2 . As common in
surface technology, ultra-high vacuum is required, and only in situ experiments – like
electron diffraction, tunnelling or photoemission spectroscopy – have been performed
by now.
One-dimensional topological defects in single crystals, known as dislocations, are
an intriguing possibility to achieve a one-dimensional metal, which was utilized by H.-
W. Helberg and his group [6] in the frame of the Göttinger Sonderforschungsbereich
126. Dislocations in silicon consist of chains of Si atoms, each having a dangling bond
as depicted in Fig. 3, i. e. a non-saturated half-filled orbital [7]. Along these rows,
metallic conduction is possible while in the perpendicular direction they are isolated.
Since dc measurements with microcontacts on both ends of a single dislocation are
challenging, contactless microwave experiments were developed as the prime tool to
investigate the electronic transport along dislocations in silicon and germanium [6].
It is possible to grow bulk materials as extremely thin and long hair-like wires
when stress is applied; they are known as whiskers of gold, silver, zinc, tin, etc.
s α
b
Figure 3. 60◦ dislocation in a (111) plane of a diamond lattice, the Burgers vector points
in the direction of b. At the edge of the additional plane (indicated by s) the covalent bonds
have no partner.
314 Martin Dressel
Metallic whiskers often lead to circuit shortages and failures, and are sought to be
avoided. An enormous potential of applications is seen in another sort of filaments
solely consisting of carbon atoms: carbon nanotubes. They can be considered as
rolled-up sheets of graphite, with electrical properties very much depending on the
winding ratio. Single-wall carbon nanotubes with a small diameter and the right
winding ratio are excellent realizations of one-dimensional conductors [8].
2.2 Anisotropic crystals

By far the most successful approach to one-dimensional physics are highly anisotropic
crystals. Here K2 Pt(CN)4 Br0.3 ·H2 O, known as KCP, represents the most intuitive
example which consists of a chain of platinum ions with overlapping d orbitals, as
depicted in Fig. 4(a). The Pt separation is only 2.894 Å along the chain direction
while the distance between the chains is 9.89 Å. The Br counterions remove electrons
from the planar Pt(CN)4 units and the resulting fractional charge Pt1.7 (CN)4 leads
to a partially filled electron band, the prerequisite for metallic behaviour. The room
temperature conductivity along the chain direction is very high σk = 102 (Ωcm)−1 .
The anisotropy ratio is σk /σ⊥ = 105 [9].
Transition metal oxides are known for decades to form low-dimensional crystal
structures [10]. Varying the composition and structural arrangement provides the
possibility to obtain one- and two-dimensional conductors or superconductors, but
also spin chains and ladders. The interplay of the different degrees of freedom to-
gether with the importance of electronic correlations makes these systems an almost
K
CN
Pt
(a) (b)
Figure 4. (a) In K2 Pt(CN)4 Br0.3 ·H2 O (KCP) the platinum ions form chains of overlapping
orbitals, leading to a metallic conductivity. (b) Sharing edges and corners, the molybdenum
oxide octahedra in K0.3 MoO3 (blue bronze) form chains along the b direction. Alkali-ions
like K or Rb provide the charge.
unlimited source for novel and exciting phenomena and a challenge for their theoret-
ical understanding [11]. The blue bronze K0.3 MoO3 and related compounds estab-
lished themselves quickly as model systems to study electronic properties of quasi-
one-dimensional metals above and below the Peierls transition at TCDW = 185 K
(Fig. 4(b)).
While in KCP the metallic properties are due to the platinum ions, organic con-
ductors form a class of solids with no metal atoms present (or relevant); instead the
π electrons distributed over of the entire organic molecule form the orbitals which
might overlap and lead to band-like conductivity. The additional degree of freedom,
tailoring these molecules, supplements the structural arrangement in the crystal and
makes it possible to fine-tune competing contributions for the desired properties. This
makes organic materials superior for studying low-dimensional physics and ordering
phenomena in solids. Low-dimensional organic crystals were explored at the Drittes
Physikalisches Institut of Göttingen University already in the 1970s and 1980s; thus
in the following we will constrain ourselves mainly to these examples.
In the course of the last two decades, in particular the Bechgaard salts tetra-
methyl-tetraselenafulvalene (TMTSF), and its variant TMTTF where selenium is
replaced by sulfur, turned out to be an excellent model for quasi-one-dimensional
metals, superconductors, charge order, spin-density-wave systems, spin chains, spin-
Peierls systems, etc. depending on the degree of coupling along and perpendicular
to the chains [12]. The planar organic molecules stack along the a-direction with a
distance of approximately 3.6 Å. In the b-direction the coupling between the chains
is small, and in the third direction the stacks are even separated by the inorganic
anion, like PF− − − −
6 , SbF6 , ClO4 , Br , etc. as depicted in Fig. 5. Each organic molecule
transfers half an electron to the counterions. In general, a small dimerization leads
to pairs of organic molecules. In addition, spontaneous charge disproportionation,
called charge ordering (CO), may divide the molecules into two non-equivalent species
(cf. Fig. 11) commonly observed in TMTTF salts. Due to the instability of the
quasi one-dimensional Fermi surface, at ambient pressure (TMTSF)2 PF6 undergoes
a transition to a spin-density-wave (SDW) ground state at TSDW = 12 K (cf. Fig. 6).
Applying pressure or replacing the PF− −
6 anions by ClO4 leads to a stronger coupling
in the second direction: the material becomes more two-dimensional. This seems
to be a requirement for superconductivity as first discovered in 1979 by Jérome and
coworkers [12,13].
3 Ordering phenomena
One-dimensional structures are intrinsically instable for thermodynamic reasons.

Hence various kinds of ordering phenomena can occur which break the translational
symmetry of the lattice, charge or spin degrees of freedom. On the other hand,
fluctuations suppress long-range order at any finite temperature in one (and two)
dimension. Only the fact that real systems consist of one-dimensional chains, which
are coupled to some degree, stabilizes the ordered ground state. The challenge now
is to extract the one-dimensional physics from experimental investigations of quasi-
one-dimensional systems.
316 Martin Dressel
S S S S
CH3 C C CH3 H C C H
C C C C
C C C C
CH3 CH3 H H
S S S S
(a) TTF
O
Cl Cl
Cl Cl
O CA
(b) (d)
(c) (e)
Figure 5. (a) Planar TMTTF molecule. (b) View along the stacks of TMTTF (a-direction)
and (c) perpendicular to them (b-direction). Along the c-direction the stacks of the organic
molecules are separated by monovalent anions, like PF−6 or AsF6 .
−
(d) TTF molecule and chloranil QCl4 (e) in the mixed-stack compound TTF-CA, the planar
TTF and CA molecules alternate.
(TMTTF)2AsF6 (TMTTF)2Br (TMTSF)2ClO4

(TMTTF)2SbF6 (TMTTF)2PF6 (TMTSF)2PF6
loc 1D
100 (TM)2X
Temperature (K)
CO metal
2D
10
SP
3D
AFM AFM SDW
1
SC
Pressure ~5 kbar
Figure 6. The phase diagram of the quasi one-dimensional TMTTF and TMTSF salts. For
the different compounds the ambient-pressure position in the phase diagram is indicated.
Going from the left to the right by physical or chemical pressure, the materials get less
one-dimensional due to the increasing interaction in the second and third direction. Here
loc stands for charge localization, CO for charge ordering, SP for spin-Peierls, AFM for
antiferromagnet, SDW for spin density wave, and SC for superconductor. The description
of the metallic state changes from a one-dimensional Luttinger liquid to a two- and three-
dimensional Fermi liquid. While some of the boundaries are clear phase transitions, the
ones indicated by dashed lines are better characterized as a crossover.
At first glance, there seems to be no good reason that in a chain of molecules

the sites are not equivalent, or that the itinerant charges of a one-dimensional metal
are not homogeneously distributed. However, the translational symmetry can be
broken if electron-phonon interaction and electron-electron interaction become strong
enough. Energy considerations then cause a redistribution in one or the other way,
leading to charge density waves or charge order. Indeed, these ordering phenomena
affect most thermodynamic, transport and elastic properties of the crystal; here we
want to focus on the electrodynamic response, i.e. optical properties in a broad sense.
First of all, there will be single-particle electron-hole excitations which require
energy of typically an eV. But in addition, collective modes are expected. There is
a rather general argument by Goldstone [14] that whenever a continuous symmetry
is broken, long-wavelength modulations in the symmetry direction should occur at
low frequencies. The fact that the lowest energy state has a broken symmetry means
that the system is stiff: modulating the order parameter (in amplitude or phase) will
cost energy. In crystals, the broken translational order introduces a rigidity to shear
deformations, and low-frequency phonons. These collective excitations are expected
well below a meV.
318 Martin Dressel
3.1 Charge density wave
The energy dispersion forms electronic bands which are filled up to the Fermi wave-
vector kF . In one dimension, the Fermi surface consists of only two sheets at ±kF .
The crucial point is that the entire Fermi surface can be mapped onto itself by a 2kF
translation. Since the density of states in one dimension diverges as (E − E0 )−1/2 at
the band-edge E0 , the electronic system is very susceptible to 2kF excitations. The
result of the Fermi surface nesting and divergency of the electronic density of states
is a spatial modulation in the charge density ρ(r) with a period of λ = π/kF (Fig. 7),
which does not have to be commensurate to the lattice: this is called a charge density
wave (CDW). Long-range charge modulation is crucial because a CDW is a k-space
phenomenon. Mediated by electron-phonon coupling, this causes a displacement of
the underlying lattice (Peierls instability). The gain in electronic energy due to
the lowering of the occupied states has to over-compensate the energy required to
modulate the lattice [10,15].
The consequence of the CDW formation is an energy gap 2∆ in the single-particle
excitation spectrum, as observed in the activated behaviour of electronic transport
or a sharp onset of optical absorption. Additionally, collective excitations are possi-
ble which lead to translation of the density wave as a whole. Although pinning to
lattice imperfections prevents Fröhlich superconductivity, the density-wave ground
state exhibits several spectacular features, like a pronounced non-linearity in the
charge transport (sliding CDW) and a strong oscillatory mode in the GHz range of
frequency (pinned-mode resonance) [15,16]. In 1974 this behaviour was observed for
the first time in the optical properties of KCP [9], but later recovered in all CDW
systems. In Fig. 8 the optical reflectivity and conductivity of KCP is displayed for
different temperatures and polarizations. Due to the anisotropic nature, the reflec-
tivity R(ω) shows a plasma edge only for the electric field E along the chains while
it remains low and basically frequency independent perpendicular to it, as known
ρ ρ π/kF
E 2∆CDW E
EF EF
k k
-π
-kF kF π
-π
-k F kF π
a a a a
(a) (b)
Figure 7. (a) In a regular metal, the charge is homogeneously distributed in space. The
conduction band is filled up to the Fermi energy EF . (b) A modulation of the charge density
with a wavelength λ = π/kF changes the periodicity; hence in k-space the Brillouin zone is
reduced which causes a gap 2∆CDW at ±kF . The system becomes insulating.
100 (a)
Ez
80
Reflectivity (%)
60
300 K
40 40 K
20
E z
0
10 10 2 10 3 10 4 10 5
Wave number (cm−1 )
8
(b)
KCP
Conductivity (10 5 Ω−1 cm−1 )
6
5
3
2
1
0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
Wave number (cm−1 )
Figure 8. (a) Reflectivity of K2 Pt(CN)4 Br0.3 ·H2 O (abbreviated KCP) measured parallel
and perpendicular to the chains at different temperatures as indicated. (b) Optical con-
ductivity of KCP for E k stacks at T = 40 K (after Ref. [9]). The excitations across the
single-particle Peierls gap lead to a broad band in the mid-infrared while the small and
sharp peak centered around 15 cm−1 is due to the pinned mode.
from dielectrics. At low temperatures, the single particle gap around 1000 cm−1 be-
comes more pronounced, and an additional structure is observed in the far-infrared
conductivity which is assigned to the pinned-mode resonance induced by the CDW
(Fig. 8(b)).
A detailed investigation of the pinned-mode resonance, its center frequency and
lineshape, and furthermore its dependence on temperature and impurity content
turned out to be extremely difficult because it commonly occurs in the range of 3
to 300 GHz (0.1 to 10 cm−1 ); i. e. it falls right into the gap between high-frequency
experiments using contacts and optical measurements by freely travelling waves [16].
Microwave technique based on resonant cavities and quasioptical THz spectroscopy
was advanced over the years in order to bridge this so-called THz gap [17]. Enclosed
resonators have been utilized for decades at the Drittes Physikalisches Institut [18]
and were readily available when in 1971 I. Shchegolev suggested them as a tool for
investigating small and fragile low-dimensional organic crystals like TTF-TCNQ [19].
320 Martin Dressel
10 0
K0.3MoO3
T = 300 K
10 −1 E b Eb
Absorptivity
10 −2
Cavity Pert.
Reflectivity
Reflectivity
Fit
(a)
10 −3
DC Values
Eb Cavity Pert. (300 K)
Cavity Pert. (200 K)
Fabry-Perot (300 K)
10 3
σ 1 (Ω−1 cm−1 )
Fit (300 K)
Fit (200 K)
10 2
E b
K0.3MoO3 2∆ (b)
10 1
10 −1 10 0 10 1 10 2 10 3 10 4 10 5
−1
Frequency (cm )
Figure 9. (a) Frequency dependence of the room temperature absorptivity A = 1 − R

of blue bronze (K0.3 MoO3 ) in both orientations E k stacks and E ⊥ stacks. The squares
were obtained by measuring the surface resistance using cavity perturbation method, the
circles represent data of quasioptical reflectivity measurements employing a Fabry-Perot
resonator. The solid lines show the results of the dispersion analysis of the data. (b) Optical
conductivity of K0.3 MoO3 measured parallel and perpendicular to the stacks by standard dc
technique (arrows), cavity perturbation (open squares), coherent-source THz spectroscopy
(solid dots) and infrared reflectivity. The open arrow indicates the single-particle gap as
estimated from dc measurements below TCDW (after Ref. [20]).
200
)
150 300 K
-1
cm
-1
Conductivity (
100
150 K
50
100 K
30 K
Rb MoO
1000 0.3 3
Dielectric constant
30 K
500
0
300 K
-500
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
-1
Frequency (cm )
Figure 10. Optical conductivity and dielectric constant of Rb0.3 Mo3 at various temper-
atures above and below TCDW as indicated; note the curves are not shifted. The points
represent results directly calculated from the transmission and phase-shift spectra. The
solid lines correspond to fits (after Ref. [21]). Around ω0 /2πc = 4.5 cm−1 the pinned-mode
resonance is clearly observed which becomes more pronounced as the temperatures is re-
duced below TCDW ≈ 180 K. The opening of the single particle gap causes the dielectric
constant to increase drastically to approximately 700; the pinned-mode resonance leads to
an additional contribution which is present already at room temperature due to fluctuations.
The strong influence of fluctuations in one dimension shifts the actual transition
TCDW well below the mean-field value TMF = ∆/1.76kB . This intermediate tem-
perature range TCDW < T < TMF is characterized by the opening of a pseudogap
in the density of states, i. e. a reduced intensity close to the Fermi energy which is
observed in the magnetic susceptibility but not in dc transport. Optical experiments
also see the development of the pseudogap and indications of the collective mode
all the way up to TMF . Utilizing a combination of different methods, the optical
response of K0.3 MoO3 was measured parallel and perpendicular to the highly con-
ducting axis; the results for T = 300 K and 200 K are displayed in Fig. 9. Clearly
pronounced excitations are discovered in the spectra below 50 cm−1 for the electric
field E parallel to the chains, the direction along which the charge-density wave devel-
ops below the Peierls transition temperature TCDW . These excitations are associated
with charge-density-wave fluctuations that exist even at room temperature and result
in a collective contribution to the conductivity. A single optical experiment finally
322 Martin Dressel
brought a confirmation of this view: Fig. 10 exhibits results of transmission mea-

surements through thin films of the blue bronze compound Rb0.3 MoO3 on an Al2 O3
substrate. The transmission coefficient and phase shift were recorded simultaneously
using a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, which is driven by backward wave oscillators
as powerful and tunable sources and which operates in the THz range of frequencies
(30 GHz to 1500 THz, 1–50 cm−1 ) [22].
3.2 Charge order

The crucial point of a CDW is the Fermi surface nesting; the driving force is the
energy reduction of the occupied states right below the Fermi energy EF when the
superstructure is formed (cf. Fig. 7). Well distinct from a charge density wave is the
occurrence of charge order (CO). The Coulomb repulsion V between adjacent lattice
sites may lead to the preference of alternatingly more or less charge as depicted in
Fig. 11. The extended Hubbard model is a good description of the relevant energies:
X X X X
c+ +

H = −t j,σ cj+1,σ + cj+1,σ cj,σ + U nj↑ nj↓ + V nj nj+1 . (1)
j=1 σ=↑↓ j=1 j=1
Here t denotes the hopping integral to describe the kinetic energy, U is the on-site
Coulomb repulsion, and V is the nearest neighbour interaction. The disproportion-
ation of charge on the molecules represents a short-range order and has to be com-
mensurate with the lattice. CO may be accompanied by a slight lattice distortion
(Fig. 11(d)), but this is a secondary effect. In contrast to a CDW, a metallic state
above the ordering temperature is not required. If it is the case (metallic state), the
gap in the density of states due to the superstructure also causes a metal-insulator
transition. The most intriguing example of a charge-order driven metal-to-insulator
transition was found in the two-dimensional organic conductor α-(BEDT-TTF)2 I3 ,
and this kept the community puzzled for almost twenty years. Below TCO = 135 K,
the dc and microwave conductivity (first measured in the group of H.-W. Helberg)
drops many orders of magnitude (Fig. 12), but no modification in the lattice is
observed [23]. Only recently it was understood that electronic correlations are re-
sponsible for this phase transition. Optical experiments (Raman and infrared) reveal
Figure 11. Possible arrangement of the molecules along the stacks. The disproportionation
of charge is depicted by the different gray shade. The molecules can be dimerized (b), too,
which may or may not be accompanied by charge order (c,d). The periodicity doubles
again (teramerization) if neighbouring dimers carry different charge (e), but also if charge-
rich molecules in adjacent dimers form pairs (f).
10 0
Conductivity σ (T) / σ (300 K)

10 −1
10 −2
α-(BEDT-TTF)2I3
600 GHz
10 −3 100 GHz
60 GHz
35 GHz
10 −4 24 GHz
12 GHz
10 GHz
dc
10 −5
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
Temperature (K)
Figure 12. Temperature dependent conductivity of α-(BEDT-TTF)2 I3 within the highly

conducting plane measured by dc and microwave technique. The charge-order transition at
135 K leads to a rapid drop of the conductivity. The plateau in the conductivity between
40 K and 100 K increases with frequency indicating hopping conduction (after Ref. [23]).
Figure 13. Temperature dependence of the dc resistivity of several Fabre and Bech-
gaard salts. As the temperature is reduced, the charges become increasingly localized in
(TMTSF)2 AsF6 and (TMTSF)2 PF6 , before the charge-ordered state is entered below 100 K.
(TMTSF)2 SbF6 shows a transition from a metal-like state directly into the charge-ordered
state at TCO = 150 K. (TMTSF)2 PF6 undergoes a SDW transition at TSDW = 12 K. Only
(TMTSF)2 ClO4 remains metallic all the way down to approximately 1.2 K where it becomes
superconducting (after Ref. [25]).
324 Martin Dressel
a charge disproportionation from half a hole per molecule above the phase transition
to 0.1e and 0.9e below TCO ; for a review see Dressel and Drichko [24].
Similar phenomena can also be observed in the quasi-one-dimensional (TMTTF)2 X
salts which are poor conductors at ambient temperature and exhibit a rapidly increas-
ing resistivity as the temperature is lowered (Fig. 13). The reason is the accumula-
tion of two effects which severely influence the energy bands as depicted in Fig. 14.
The first one is a structural: due to the interaction with the anions (Fig. 5(c)) the
molecular stack is dimerized as visualized in Fig. 11(b). The conduction band is
split by a dimerization gap ∆dimer and the material has a half-filled band. In a
second step the Coulomb repulsion V causes charge disproportionation within the
dimers (Fig. 11(d)). On-site Coulomb repulsion U also drives the one-dimensional
half-filled system towards an insulating state: correlations induce a gap ∆U at the
Fermi energy EF as shown in Fig. 14(c). The tetramerization of the CO according to
Fig. 11(e) and f changes this picture conceptually (Fig. 14(d)): the soft gap ∆CO due
to short-range nearest-neighbour interaction V localizes the charge carriers. If not
E E
∆U
EF EF
(a) (c)
-π π
-π π
k k
a a a a
E E
∆tetramer
EF EF
∆dimer
(b) (d)
-π π -π π
k k
a a a a
Figure 14. (a) A homogeneous stack of TMTCF, for example, with half an electronic charge
+e per molecule results in a three-quarter-filled band which leads to metallic behaviour.
(b) Dimerization doubles the unit cell and the Brillouin zone is cut into two equal parts. The
upper band is half filled and the physical properties remain basically unchanged. (c) Due
to on-site Coulomb respulsion U a gap ∆U opens at the Fermi energy EF that drives a
metal-to-insulator transition. (d) The tetramerization doubles the unit cell again and also
causes a gap ∆tetramer .
30
20
10 / ε
6
Figure 15. Temperature dependence

10
of the inverse dielectric constant 1/
of (TMTTF)2 X, with different anions
1 2 3 X = PF6 (1), AsF6 (2), and SbF6 (3)
0 (after Ref. [27]).
40 80 120 160
Temperature (K)
completely developed it just results in a reduction of the density of state (pseudogap).

The tetramerization gap, on the other hand, is related to long-range order.
One- and two-dimensional NMR spectroscopy demonstrated the existence of an
intermediate charge-ordered phase in the TMTTF family. At ambient temperature,
the spectra are characteristic of nuclei in equivalent molecules. Below a continuous
charge-ordering transition temperature TCO , there is evidence for two inequivalent
molecules with unequal electron densities. The absence of an associated magnetic
anomaly indicates only the charge degrees of freedom are involved and the lack of
evidence for a structural anomaly suggests that charge-lattice coupling is too weak
to drive the transition [26].
The first indications of CO came from dielectric measurements in the radio-fre-
quency range [27], where a divergency of the dielectric constant was observed at a
certain temperature TCO , as depicted in Fig. 15. Since this behaviour is well known
from ferroelectric transitions, the idea is that at elevated temperatures the molecules
carry equivalent charge of +0.5e; but upon lowering the temperature, the charge
alternates by ±ρ causing a permanent dipole moment. Hence, new intermolecular
vibrations at far-infrared frequencies below 100 cm−1 get infrared active along all
three crystal axes in the CO state due to the unequal charge distribution on the
TMTTF molecules. Above the CO transition, these modes, which can be assigned
to translational vibrations of the TMTTF molecules, are infrared silent but Raman
active. By now there are no reports on a collective excitation which should show up
as a low-frequency phonon.
The CO can be locally probed by intramolecular vibrations. Totally symmetric
Ag modes are not infrared active; nevertheless, due to electron-molecular vibrational
(emv) coupling (i. e. the charge transfer between two neighbouring organic TMTTF
molecules which vibrate out-of phase), these modes can be observed by infrared
spectroscopy for the polarization parallel to the stacks. As demonstrated in Fig. 16,
the resonance frequency is a very sensitive measure of the charge per molecule [28].
The charge disproportionation increases as the temperature drops below TCO in a
mean-field fashion expected from a second-order transition; the ratio amounts to
about 2:1 in (TMTTF)2 AsF6 and 5:4 (TMTTF)2 PF6 . The charge disproportiona-
326 Martin Dressel
70 K 110 K
Conductivity
50 K
70 K
20 K
20 K
10 K 10 K
(TMTTF)2PF6 (TMTTF)2AsF6
1590 1600 1610 1600 1620

Frequency (cm−1 ) Frequency (cm−1 )
Figure 16. Mid-infrared conductivity of (TMTTF)2 PF6 and (TMTTF)2 AsF6 for light po-
larized parallel to the molecular stacks. The emv coupled totally symmetric intramolecular
ν3 (Ag ) mode (which mainly involves the C=C double bond) splits due to charge order as the
temperature is cooled below TCO . The charge disproportionation ratio amounts to about
2:1 in (TMTTF)2 AsF6 and 5:4 (TMTTF)2 PF6 (after Ref. [28]).
tion is slightly reduced in the AsF6 salt, when it enters the spin-Peierls state, and
unchanged in the antiferromagnetic PF6 salt which infers the coexistence of charge
order and spin-Peierls order at low temperatures.
3.3 Neutral-ionic transition

While in the previous example the crystals consist of separate cation and anion chains
between which the electron transfer occurs, mixed-stack organic charge-transfer com-
pounds have only one type of chain composed of alternating π electron donor and
acceptor molecules (... A−ρ D+ρ A−ρ D+ρ A−ρ D+ρ ...) as sketched in Fig. 5(e). These
materials are either neutral or ionic, but under the influence of pressure or tem-
perature certain neutral compounds become ionic. There is a competition between
the energy required for the formation of a D+ A− pair and the Madelung energy.
Neutral-ionic (NI) phase transitions are collective, one-dimensional charge-transfer
phenomena occurring in mixed-stack charge-transfer crystals, and they are associ-
ated to many intriguing phenomena, as the dramatic increase in conductivity and
dielectric constant at the transition, such as plotted in Fig. 17 [29,30].
In the simplest case the charge per molecule changes from completely neutral
ρ = 0 to fully ionized ρ = 1. Ideally this redistribution of charge is decoupled
from the lattice, and therefore should not change the inter-molecular spacing. In
most real cases, however, the NI transition is characterized by the complex interplay
between the average ionicity ρ on the molecular sites and the stack dimerization
δ. The ionizity may act as an order parameter only in the case of discontinuous,
first-order phase transitions. While the inter-site Coulomb interaction V favours a
discontinuous jump of ionicity, the intra-chain charge-transfer integral t mixes the
fully neutral and fully ionic quantum states and favours continuous changes in ρ.
Dielectric constant ε
400 TTF-CA
300
Figure 17. Temperature depen-
dent dielectric constant (T ) of
200 TTF-CA measured at a frequency
of 30 kHz (after Ref. [30]). The di-
100 vergency at TNI = 81 K clearly evi-
dences the ferroelectric-like neutral-
0 ionic transition.
0 40 80 120 160 200
Temperature (K)
The coupling of t to lattice phonons induces the dimerization of the stack, basically a
Peierls-like transition to a ferroelectric state, which is a second-order phase transition.
Intramolecular (Holstein) phonons, on the other hand, modulate the on-site energy
U and favour a discontinuous jump in ρ.
In terms of a modified, one-dimensional Hubbard model [similar to Eq. (1)], the NI
transition can be viewed as a transition from a band insulator to a Mott insulator,
due to the competition between the energy difference between donor and acceptor
sites, and the on-site Coulomb repulsion U . Peierls and Holstein phonons are both
coupled to charge transfer electrons, albeit before the NI transition the former are
only infrared active, and the latter only Raman active. This makes polarized Raman
and reflection measurements a suitable tool to explore the NI transition.
The temperature induced NI transition of tetrathiafulvalene-chloranil (TTF-CA,
cf. Fig. 5(d, e)) at TNI = 81 K is the prime example of a first-order transition with
a discontinuous jump in ρ. This can be seen in Fig. 18 by a jump in the frequency
of those of the intramolecular vibrations, which are coupled to the electronic charge
because their position depends on the charge on the molecules [31,32].
The vibronic bands present in the infrared spectra for T > TNI are combination
modes involving the lattice mode, which gives rise to the Peierls distortion at the tran-
sition. From calculations we expect three lattice modes which couple to electrons and
become stronger as the transition is approached. The lattice modes strongly couple
to electrons and behave as soft modes of the ferroelectric transition at TNI = 81 K. In
Fig. 19 the low-frequency conductivity spectra are plotted for different temperatures
T > TNI . The lowest mode softens most and is seen strongly overdamped around
20 cm−1 . The temperature evolution of this Peierls mode, which shows a clear soft-
ening (from 70 to 20 cm−1 ) before the first-order transition to the ionic ferroelectric
state takes place. In the ordered phase, a clear identification and theoretical mod-
elling of the Goldstone mode is still an open problem because the system has several
degrees of freedom coupled to each other.
The cooperative charge transfer among the constructive molecules of TTF-CA
can also be induced by irradiation by a short laser pulse. A photoinduced local
charge-transfer excitation triggers the phase change and causes the transition in
328 Martin Dressel
1.0
0.8
T = 82 K
Reflectivity
0.6
0.4
T = 75 K
0.2
(a)
100
80
TTF-CA
Conductivity (Ω-1cm-1)
60 Figure 18. (a) Reflectivity and

(b) conductivity spectra of TTF-
40
CA measured along the stacking di-
rection above (red line) and below
20
(b) (blue line) the neutral-ionic transi-
0 tion at TNI = 81 K (after Ref. [32]).
10 100
Wavenumber (cm-1)
both directions [33]. When Cl is replaced by Br in the tetrahalo-p-benzoquinones the

lattice is expanded, (like a negative pressure) and the ionic phase vanishes completely.
Hydrostatic pressure or Br-Cl substitution is utilized as a control parameter to tune
the NI transition more or less continuously at T → 0 [34].
4 Outlook
No doubt, one-dimensional physics matured from a toy model to an extremely active

field of theoretical and experimental research, spanning a broad range from quantum
gases to condensed-matter physics and semiconductor technology. Several novel and
exciting phenomena can be investigated in these systems. In one-dimensional metals
collective modes replace the single-particle excitations common to three-dimensional
conductors and described by Landau’s Fermi liquid concept of interaction electrons.
Another property typical for low-dimensional solids is their susceptibility to symme-
try breaking with respect to the lattice, the charge and the spin degrees of freedom.
Broken-symmetry ground states imply that the system becomes stiff, because the
modulation of the order parameter costs energy; therefore collective modes appear
at low energies. In the case of magnets, the broken rotational symmetry leads to a
magnetic stiffness and spin waves. In superconductors the gauge symmetry is broken,
but due to the Higgs mechanism the Goldstone mode is absent at low frequencies
and shifted well above the plasma frequency. In the examples above, we were deal-
ing with translational symmetry, which is lowered in crystals due to charge ordering
phenomena.
Charge density waves drive a metal to an insulator, for the Fermi surface becomes
instable; the pinned-mode resonance can nicely be detected in the GHz range using
100
300 K
50 TTF-CA
0
250 K
50
0
200 K
50
Conductivity (Ω-1 cm-1)

175 K
50
0
150 K
50
0
130 K
50
0
110 K
50
0
90 K
50
0
82 K
50
0
0 20 40 60 80 100
-1
Wavenumber (cm )
Figure 19. Low-frequency conductivity of TTF-CA for T > TNI for different temperatures
as indicated in the panels. As the NI transition is approached by decreasing temperature,
the modes become stronger and an additional band appears as low as 20 cm−1 . To make the
comparison easier, the room temperature spectrum (black line) is replotted in the lowest
frame (after Ref. [32]).
a variety of high-frequency and optical techniques. Purely electronic correlations

between adjacent sites can cause charge disproportionation. Organic conductors are
suitable realizations to investigate the properties at the metal-insulator transitions.
The neutral-ionic transition observed in mixed-stack one-dimensional organic charge-
transfer salts can be a pure change of ionizity, but commonly goes hand in hand with
a Peierls distortion. This can be seen in a softening of the low-frequency phonon
modes above the phase transition.
Optical methods and in particular microwave techniques as developed at the Dritte
Physikalische Institut in Göttingen are powerful tools for investigation of charge-
ordering phenomena in solids.
Acknowledgements. The review is based on many years of collaboration with a large

number of people; only some of them can be mentioned here. In particular I would like to
thank N. Drichko, M. Dumm, A. Girlando, B. Gorshunov, G. Grüner, and H.-W. Helberg.
330 Martin Dressel
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the beginning of the 20th century and headed by Max Reich for a long time. Students
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of Insulation Research and the Radiation Laboratory at MIT during World War II
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Multistep association of cations and anions.

The Eigen-Tamm mechanism some decades later
Reinhard Pottel, Julian Haller, and Udo Kaatze
Abstract. Broadband ultrasonic absorption spectra and complex dielectric spectra for
aqueous solutions of electrolytes are reported and are discussed in terms of cation-anion as-
sociation schemes. Ultrasonic spectra for solutions of 3:2 valent salts clearly reveal the com-
plete Eigen-Tamm multistep association mechanism, including inner-sphere, outer-sphere,
and outer-outer-sphere complexes. Reduced association schemes follow for solutions of 2:2
valent and 2:1 valent salts, the latter just revealing the equilibrium between the complex of
encounter and the outer-sphere complex. Dielectric and ultrasonic spectra are evaluated in
terms of single steps in the intriguingly complex association scheme of ZnCl2 aqueous solu-
tions. The latter spectra are alternatively discussed assuming a fluctuating cluster model.
1 Introduction
The incomplete dissociation of multivalent salts in solutions is of considerable sig-

nificance not just for the theory of electrolytes but also for biochemistry and wide
fields of chemical engineering. The exploration of the molecular dynamics of elec-
trolyte solutions and of the kinetics of ion complex formation has been an enduring
topic of research at the Dritte Physikalische Institut from the very first. Interest
was originally inspired by the technical problem of measuring distances in sea water
by means of acoustical signals [1]. It was found that sea water may absorb sound
more strongly than distilled water and that, in addition, the absorption depends in
an unexpected manner upon the frequency of the sound field. Already in the early
fifties of the last century Tamm and Kurtze developed techniques, enabling sound
absorption measurements over the remarkably broad frequency range from 5 kHz to
300 MHz, and demonstrated the relaxation characteristics in the frequency dependent
sonic absorption coefficient of 2:2 valent electrolyte solutions [2–7]. Consideration of
sonic spectra also for solutions of 2:1 electrolytes lead to the conclusion that neither
a simple inter-ionic interaction, without involvement of water, nor an interaction of
cations or anions, respectively, just with water could be the reason for the ultrasonic
excess absorption spectra of the aqueous systems [8]. As other effects, such as hydrol-
ysis and ion cloud interactions were not consistent with the experimental findings,
an interaction between cations, anions, and water molecules has been proposed the
334 R. Pottel, J. Haller and U. Kaatze
cause for the absorption characteristics. This interaction involves a stepwise substi-
tution of water molecules in the coordination shells of a cation-aquo complex by an
anion [9,10]
(Mm+ )aq + (Ll− )aq *

) (Mm+ (H2 O)2 Ll− )aq
*
) (Mm+ (H2 O)Ll− )aq (1)
*
) (ML)(m−l)+
aq

In this scheme Mm+ (H2 O)2 Ll− aq denotes an outer-outer sphere complex in which
the metal ion Mm+ l−
and the ligand L are separated by two layers of water molecules.
m+ l−
M (H2 O) L aq represents the outer sphere complex with one water layer be-
(m−l)+
tween cation and anion, and (ML)aq is the inner sphere complex, the contact ion
pair.
Both former steps in the Eigen-Tamm scheme (Eq. (1)) contribute to the sonic
excess absorption at high frequencies. In order to increase the significance of the
spectra Plaß and Kehl extended the frequency range of measurements up to 2.8
GHz [11]. Nevertheless a clear conclusion on the number of relaxation terms within
the experimental spectra was not reached and the existence of the second step
in the complex formation scheme, reflecting the equilibrium between outer-outer
sphere and outer sphere complexes, has been controversely discussed [12–16]. Com-
bining frequency domain (ultrasonic) techniques and time domain (pressure-jump)
techniques of the Drittes Physikalisches Institut and the Max-Planck-Institut für
Biophysikalische Chemie, Göttingen, it was possible to clearly reveal three relax-
ation terms in the spectra of scandium sulfate solutions and to show thereby that
all three steps in the reaction scheme (Eq. (1)) of the Eigen-Tamm mechanism may
exist at least in 3:2 valent electrolyte solutions [17].
Complementary to the sonic spectrometry studies broadband dielectric measure-
ment techniques have been developed and have been employed to verify the concept of
ion complex formation. A detailed investigation into 2:2 valent electrolyte solutions
was the first to identify dipolar ion structures by relaxation terms in the dielectric
spectra of solutions [18,19]. Later 3:2 valent [20] as well as 1:1, 2:1, and 3:1 valent elec-
trolytes [21] were studied. Particular attention was paid to zinc(II) chloride solutions
with their intriguing complexation properties [22,23]. During the last years interest
in dielectric relaxations due to ion-pairs in solutions has been rediscovered [24–29].
The studies of ZnCl2 solutions have been supported by ultrasonic attenuation
measurements which, in addition to any evaluations in terms of the conventional
complexation scheme [30], have been alternatively dicussed employing a model of
rapidly fluctuating ion clusters [31]. Recently, the Eigen-Tamm concept of stepwise
association has been questioned even for 2:2 valent electrolytes and a mode-coupling
theory has been presented assuming fluctuations in the ion concentration to be the
cause of the high-frequency ultrasonic relaxation term of multivalent electrolytes
instead of the formation of stoichiometrically well defined outer-sphere complexes [32].
Here we briefly review evidence in favour of the multistep association mechanism
(Eq. (1)) of 2:2 and 3:2 valent electrolytes. We also discuss spectra of 1:1 and 2:1
valent salt solutions in which Coulombic interactions between cations and anions
Multistep association of cations and anions 335
are considerably reduced [30,31,33–35]. The latter include systems with calcium as
cation, which have been investigated because of the far-reaching biochemical impli-
cations of that ion.
2 Experimental methods
2.1 Fundamental aspects

Sonic as well as dielectric spectrometry utilize naturally present molecular marks, the
molar volume and the electrical dipole moment, respectively, to monitor the micrody-
namics and fast elementary kinetics of liquids (Fig. 1). Experimental techniques are
currently available in the frequency range from 103 Hz to 1010 Hz for sonic absorption
measurements [36,37] and in the even broader range from 10−6 Hz to 1012 Hz for the
dielectric spectrometry [38]. Basically both methods aim at the study of the sample
at thermal equilibrium. In order to reach sufficient accuracy in the measurements,
however, in practice the sample is exposed to a small amplitude disturbing sonic
or electromagnetic field, respectively. Methods in use consist in the observation of
the response of the sample to either step pulses or harmonically alternating signals.
The former method, globally named time-domain spectrometry uses pressure jumps,
temperature jumps, or electrical field jumps to slightly disturb the system and to fol-
low its relaxation into thermal equilibrium by continuous measurement of a suitable
sample property, such as density, electrical conductivity, or dielectric polarization.
Due to molecular interactions this property is unable to instantaneously obey the ex-
terior force and therefore retardedly reaches its new equilibrium, typically following
an exponential. From a fundamental point of view time domain techniques entail an
unfavourable concentration of energy of the exciting signal in a short period of time.
For this reason, frequency domain techniques, in which the sample response to a
harmonically alternating acoustical or electromagnetic field is observed, are popular,
particularly for high frequency measurements.
Because of the phase lag between the density and the pressure in the sonic wave
and between the polarization and electrical field in the dielectric measurements, en-
ergy of the applied wave is absorbed in the liquid. The amplitude of a plane wave,
Figure 1. Ensemble of water molecules illustrating fluctuations in the direction of the

electric dipole moment (left) and in the molar volume (right).
propagating within the sample, decreases exponentially along the axis of wave propa-
gation. The absorption coefficient α in the exponential decay is one of the parameters
that is determined in frequency domain spectrometry.
According to the Kramers-Kronig relations absorption is correlated with disper-
sion in the sound velocity and speed of light, respectively, within the sample. The
dispersion in the sound velocity of liquids is notoriously small and thus normally not
considered in the discussion of results. We mention, however, that the complexation
kinetics of electrolyte solutions has been studied in the frequency range 3-200 MHz
solely by high-precision sound velocity dispersion measurements [39,40].
In the dielectric spectrometry of dipolar liquids it is common practice to also
measure dispersion and to verify consistency of the results thereby. Hence dielec-
tric measurements typically involve complex quantities, preferably complex transfer
functions or complex reflection coefficients of appropriate specimen cells, instead of
only a scalar decay function. The dielectric properties of a sample are expressed in
terms of a frequency dependent complex quantity, the permittivity
1 P (t)
(ν) = 0 (ν) − i00 (ν) = + 1. (2)
0 E(t)
Here 0 (ν) and 00 (ν) are the real part and negative imaginary part of the permittivity
at frequency ν, i2 = −1, and 0 is the electrical field constant. 0 represents the
component of polarization P that is in phase with the electrical field E = Ê · eiωt
and 00 represents the contribution with a π/2 phase shift. The simplest relaxation
spectral function is the Debye function [41]
(0) − (∞)
(ν) = (∞) + (3)
1 + iωτ
with discrete relaxation time τ and angular frequency ω = 2πν. This function
corresponds with an exponential decay in the time domain. In the frequency range
up to 100 GHz the dielectric spectrum of water can be well described by the Debye
relaxation function [42,43]. As an example the water spectrum at 25◦ C is shown in
Fig. 2 where also the extrapolated low-frequency (“static”) permittivity (0) and the
extrapolated high-frequency permittivity (∞) are indicated.
Due to electrical conductivity ionic liquids, in which we are interested here, display
an additional contribution
00σ (ν) = σ/(0 ω) (4)
to the total loss
00tot (ν) = 00 (ν) + 00σ (ν) . (5)
Because of the frequency dependence in 00σ ,
inversely proportional to ν, the conduc-
tivity contribution masks the dielectric contribution 00 at low frequencies and renders
measurements difficult or impossible at all at small ν. In Eq. (4) the specific electric
conductivity σ is assumed independent of ν within the frequency range under con-
sideration. Figure 3 illustrates the situation by a dielectric spectrum for an aqueous
solution of sodium chloride. The salt concentration of that solution is less than one
tenth of the salinity of the North Sea and is only one third of a physiological solution.
Figure 2. Real part 0 (ν) and negative imaginary part 00 (ν) of the complex dielectric
spectrum of water at 25◦ C [43]. Permittivity data from the literature [44,45] are presented.
Lines are graphs of Eq. (3) with parameter values from a regression analysis: (∞) =
5.2, (0) = 78.35, and τ = 8.27 ps [46].
A complementary situation exists in the ultrasonic spectrometry. Coupling of com-

pressional waves to shear motion and, to lower extent, to heat conduction results in
energy dissipation which manifests itself in the absorption coefficient by a contribu-
tion proportional to ν 2 if the shear viscosity and thermal conductivity themselves
are independent of ν [49]. In the commonly used format, in which the absorption-
per-wavelength, αλ, is considered as a function of frequency, energy dissipation by
shear viscosity and thermal conductivity add an asymptotic high-frequency term Bν,
with B independent of ν. An example for an ultrasonic spectrum is given in Fig. 4,
where, along with the total absorption-per-wavelength, αλ, the excess absorption is
displayed,
(αλ)exc = αλ − Bν . (6)
The (αλ)exc data again follow a Debye-type relaxation function
Aωτ
(αλ)exc = (7)
1 + ω2 τ 2
with discrete relaxation time τ and with amplitude A.

The background contribution restricts ultrasonic spectrometry at high frequencies.
Additionally, the wavelength λ of the sonic field becomes so small (λ=150 nm at
10 GHz, water, 25◦ C) that, at even higher frequencies, the use of continuum models
might be questioned.
spectrum of a solution of 0.051 mol/l NaCl in water at 20◦ C [47,48]. Open symbols represent
the dielectric part 00 = 00tot − 00σ in the total loss. Triangles on the one hand and points as
well as circles on the other hand indicate results from two institutes [47].
2.2 Measurement techniques
Wide frequency ranges exist for both spectroscopic methods in which absolute mea-
surements of the liquid properties are enabled by variation of the sample thickness.
In dielectric measurements of aqueous systems the wavelength λ within the liquid at
frequencies roughly above 1 GHz is sufficiently small to enable variable path length
techniques for the determination of the complex propagation constant γ = α + i2π/λ
[38]. In ultrasonic spectrometry the limiting parameter is the absorption coefficient
which only above about 1 MHz is sufficiently large to enable absolute α measure-
ments [36,37]. At lower frequencies quasistatic (ν) measurements are performed
with the aid of suitable sample cells, whereas the ultrasonic attenuation coefficient is
obtained from resonator techniques in which the path length of interactions between
the sample and the sonic field is virtually increased by multiple reflections.
Figure 5 shows the scheme of a semi-automatic double-beam interferometer for
dielectric measurements in the microwave region [52]. It may be constructed from
Figure 4. Spectra of the total ultrasonic absorption per wavelength (points), the asymp-
totic high frequency background contribution (dashed curve), and the excess absorption per
wavelength (circles) for a 0.5 mol/l CuCl2 solution in water at 25◦ C [50,51]. Lines are graphs
of the analytical forms of αλ and (αλ)exc , using the relaxation spectral function defined by
Eq.(7) and parameter values as following from a regression analysis of the experimental
data: A = 7.6 · 10−3 , τ = 0.35 ns, B = 33.95 ps [50].
coaxial-line components or waveguide devices. The central part is accentuated in

grey. This part establishes a microwave bridge of which one branch contains the
sample cell (6, Fig. 5), basically a circular waveguide or coaxial line, holding the
liquid. Another waveguide or coaxial line (8) is immersed in the liquid. It can
be precisely shifted along the direction z of wave propagation. The other branch
is made of an attenuator (4) and a phase shifter (14) which, at a certain sample
thickness z0 can be adjusted to yield zero signal Uout at the interferometer output.
Varying the position z of the probing waveguide or coaxial line and measuring Uout
as the interferometer goes off-balance, along with the input signal Uin , yields the
interferometer transfer function T (z) = Uout (z) /Uin . Fitting the theoretical T (z)
relation to the experimental data yields the propagation constant and thus the desired
sample permittivity (ν).
The corresponding set-up for the ultrasonic spectrometry is sketched in Fig. 6.
Pulse-modulated waves are applied in order to allow for the separation of the mea-
surement signal from electrical crosstalk and also from waveforms resulting from mul-
tiple reflections [53,54]. Therefore, instead of an interferometer, a comparator set-up
is employed, in which coaxial switches (5, Fig. 6) allow the measurement branch,
containing the sample cell (8), to be replaced by a high presicion piston attenuator
(13), featuring a calculable signal vernier [55]. The scalar transfer function T (z) of
the sample cell at varying sample thickness z allows for a straightforward evaluation
in terms of the absorption coefficient of the liquid. From a standing-wave pattern in
Figure 5. Block diagram of semi-automatic microwave double-beam interferometers for

the dielectric spectrometry of liquids [52]: 1, signal generator; 2, uniline; 3, directional
coupler; 4, variable attenuator; 5, impedance transformer; 6, sample cell with 7, sealing
dielectric window and 8, precisely shiftable probe; 9, flexible waveguide or coaxial line; 10,
digital distance meter with 11, control unit; 12, stepping motor with 13, control unit; 14,
phase shifter; 15, power sensor; 16, level meter; 17, frequency counter; 18, process control
computer.
Figure 6. Block diagram of the semi-automatic comparator set-up for absolute ultrasonic
absorption coefficient measurements between 1 MHz and 5 GHz [53,54]: 1, signal generator;
2, modulator; 3, broadband power amplifier; 4, pulse generator; 5, change-over switch; 6,
variable attenuator; 7, impedance transformer; 8, specimen cell with 9, transmitter unit
prepared for parallel adjustment to 10, receiver unit; 11, digital distance meter with 12,
control unit; 13, stepping motor drive or piezo-translator with 14, control unit; 15, fixed
coaxial attenuator for impedance matching; 16, high-precision adjustable piston attenuator;
17, superheterodyne receiver; 18, boxcar integrator; 19, switch driver and control; 20, trigger
and control-pulse generator; 21, frequency counter; 22, process control computer.
Figure 7. Principle of quasistatic electrical input impedance measurement system [56]: 1,

network analyzer with S, signal output port, as well as R, reference and M, measurement
signal input port; 2, reflection test set; 3, sample cell; 4, process control computer.
T (z) at small sample thickness z also the sonic wavelength λ within the sample can
be derived.
In dielectric spectrometry at frequencies below 3 GHz quasistatic electric input
impedance measurements can be performed utilizing a suitable network analyzer
with reflection test set (Fig. 7). Sample cells from the cut-off variety [56] have proven
well suited. Such cells basically consist of a coaxial line/circular waveguide transition,
the waveguide diameter being sufficiently small to excite the device, filled with the
sample liquid, below the cutoff frequency of its fundamental TM01 field mode. The
evanescent electromagnetic field in the waveguide section, the field in the feeding
coaxial line, as well as the field lines passing the sealing dielectric window can be
represented by a network of capacitors, the capacitances of which are determined by
calibration measurements [46,56,57].
Because of the frequency dependence of the Bν-term in the total sonic absorption
per wavelength (Eq. 6) the sonic absorption coefficient of aqueous solutions is small at
frequencies below about 10 MHz. To increase the sensitivity in the ultrasonic absorp-
tion spectrometry at low frequencies, resonator methods are employed. The superior
measuring ability of network analyzers is again utilized. It is convenient, however, to
determine the transfer function of the resonator rather than its reflection coefficient
(Fig. 8). The liquid is contained in a circular cylindrical cavity. The end faces of the
cell are normally formed by piezoelectric quartz transducers [58–60], but reflectors
made of glass, with transducers attached to their back faces, are also applied [61].
In order to reduce diffraction of the sonic waves at the low-frequency measurement
Figure 8. Schematic representation of sonic resonator measurement set-up [58–61]: 1,

network analyzer as in Fig. 7; 2, signal divider; 3, cavity resonator cell; 4, amplifier; 5,
process control computer.
range of the device, concavely shaped end faces, with radius of curvature at around
2 m are employed [59–61]. Using the resonator method, the absorption coefficient α
of the sample liquid is determined relative to a reference liquid with matched sound
velocity and density [62].
3 Aqueous solutions of 2:2 and 3:2 valent salts
3.1 Ultrasonic spectra

As an example for 2:2 electrolytes an ultrasonic excess absorption spectrum for a
solution of 0.1 mol/l MnSO4 in water is displayed in Fig. 9. The line additionally
given in that diagram represents the sum of two Debye relaxation terms
A1 ωτ1 A2 ωτ2
(αλ)exc = + . (8)
1 + ω 2 τ12 1 + ω 2 τ22
Within the broad frequency range of measurements the two-Debye-term model repre-
sents the measured data within the limits of eperimental errors. Hence the spectrum
likely reflects two steps of the Eigen-Tamm association scheme (Eq. (1)), either
Mn2+ (H2 O)2 SO2− ) Mn2+ (H2 O) SO2−

* ) Mn2+ SO2−
*

4 aq 4 aq 4 aq
(9)
or
Mn2+ + SO2− ) Mn2+ (H2 O) SO2−

* ) Mn2+ SO2−
*

aq 4 aq 4 aq 4 aq
. (10)
Figure 9. Ultrasonic excess absorption spectrum for a solution of 0.1 mol/l MnSO4 in
water at 25◦ C. The data are taken from the literature [58,60,65], the line is the graph of a
superposition of two Debye type relaxation terms (Eq. (8)).
The former scheme (Eq. (9)) suggests another relaxation term to contribute to the
spectrum at frequencies above the measuring range, namely the term due to the
equilibrium between the completely dissociated ions and the outer-outer-sphere com-
plexes. The latter scheme (Eq. (10)) is based on the assumption of a negligibly small
concentration of outer-outer-sphere complexes.
In the early ultrasonic relaxation studies of ion complex formation [5–11,15] the
excess absorption of the electrolyte solutions has been calculated using the B value
of water in Eq. (6). The high frequency relaxation region was found to extend over a
broader frequency band than a single Debye term. For this reason the excess absorp-
tion spectra were discussed in terms of three Debye-type relaxation processes which
were assigned to the three steps in the complete Eigen-Tamm scheme (Eq. (1)). This
assumption has been questioned [12,16,63] because of the unphysical volume change
for the formation of outer-sphere complexes from outer-outer-sphere complexes fol-
lowing thereby. An unusually large change in volume results which is furthermore
negative. Since B depends on the shear viscosity ηS of the liquid and as ηS will
change on addition of salt, use of the B value of the solvent in the evaluation of the
electrolyte solution spectra is doubtless an approximation. Due to the dominance
of the background absorption at high frequencies, however, small errors in B may
virtually broaden the relaxation characteristics of that part of the ultrasonic spectra.
Such broadening of relaxation regions is illustrated in Fig. 10. Hence the assumption
of all three steps in the Eigen-Tamm scheme to show up in the ultrasonic spectra of
2:2 valent salt solutions seems to rely on a slightly incorrect background absorption.
Evidence for the existence of the outer-outer sphere complex may be obtained from
consistency of relaxation parameters, measured as a function of salt concentration,
with the kinetic relations [64].
Recently an alternative model for the description of ultrasonic spectra has been
proposed [63] in which the low frequency Debye-type relaxation in the spectra of 2:2
valent electrolyte solutions is furtheron assigned to the formation of inner-sphere
Figure 10. Graph of a Debye relaxation function (αλ)exc = Aωτ /(1 + ω 2 τ 2 ), full line and
of a Debye function with small differential term ∆Bν added: ∆B = 0.02πτ A, dashed line;
∆B = 0.04πτ A, dotted line.
complexes. The high-frequency relaxation region, however, is discussed in terms of

a distribution function theory in which no distinct ion complexes are assumed a
priori [32]. Another approach that does not proceed from the existence of stoichio-
metrically defined complex structures but from long-range concentration fluctuations
is briefly presented in the discussion of zinc chloride solution spectra.
Figure 11 shows ultrasonic excess attenuation spectra for solutions of scandium
sulfate in water. These spectra obviously reveal three relaxation regions within
the frequency range of measurements. The three Debye relaxation terms are in-
dicated by dashed curves. They have been assigned to the coupled scheme [17]
k12
Sc3+ + SO2− ) Sc3+ (H2 O)2 SO2−
*

aq 4 aq k 4 aq
21
k23 k34 (11)

* Sc3+ (H2 O) SO2−
) 4
* (ScSO4 )+
) aq ,
k32 aq k43
corresponding with Eq. (1). Evaluation of the relaxation parameters of Sc2 (SO4 )3 -
solution spectra at salt concentrations between 0.0033 and 0.1 mol/l enabled a com-
plete characterization of the stepwise association scheme. As the pH of the solutions
was adjusted at 2.4, at which the sulfate ion is partly protonated, the protolysis
reaction
Sc3+ aq + SO2− ) Sc3+ aq + HSO−

+ H3 O+ *

4 aq 4 aq + H2 O , (12)
coupled to the stepwise association mechanism, has been also taken into account [17].
The forward and reverse rate constants kij and kji , respectively, following from the
evaluation of the ultrasonic spectra are listed in Table 1 where also the equilibrium
constants
Ki = kij /kji , (13)
the association constant
Ka = K1 [1 + K2 (1 + K3 )] (14)
Figure 11. Ultrasonic excess absorption spectra for solutions of Sc2 (SO4 )3 in water at
25◦ C and at pH=2.4 (◦, 0.1 mol/l; 4, 0.058 mol/l; •, 0.033 mol/l [17]). Dashed lines show
the subdivision of the latter spectrum into three Debye-type relaxation terms as following
from a nonlinear least-squares regression analysis of the experimental data. Full lines are
graphs of the sum of these terms with the parameter values found by the fitting procedure.
and the reaction volumes ∆Vi are given. The values obtained solely from ultra-
sonic measurements are reasonable and support the assumption of the Eigen-Tamm
multistep association mechanism.
3.2 Dielectric spectra
The complex dielectric spectrum for a solution of 0.1 mol/l Al2 (SO4 )3 in water differs
from that of the solvent in various aspects (Fig. 12). Both spectra display a dispersion
(d0 (ν)/dν < 0)/absorption (00 (ν) > 0) region in the frequency range around 20 GHz
reflecting the dielectric relaxation of water. The solvent contribution 1 to the ex-
trapolated static permittivity (0) of the solution, however, is considerably smaller
−1
than the static permittivity W (0) of water. Also the relaxation frequency (2πτ1 )
of the water contribution to the solution spectrum is slightly shifted with respect to
−1
the relaxation frequency (2πτW ) of water at the same temperature. Both changes
i, j kij kji Ki ∆Vi

s−1 s−1 cm3 /mol
1,2 (2 ± 0.5) · 1011 § (9 ± 3) · 108 220 ± 100 ∗ 13 ± 3

2,3 (1.4 ± 0.5) · 107 (2 ± 0.7) · 107 0.7 ± 0.5 7±2
3,4 (9.9 ± 3) · 106 (3.3 ± 1) · 106 3.0 ± 0.7 7±2
Ka = (800 ± 400)(mol/l)−1
Table 1. Rate constants kij and kji of the coupled reaction scheme of ion association
(Eq.11), equilibrium constants Ki and reaction volumes ∆Vi , as well as association constant
Ka (Eq.14) for aqueous solutions of scandium sulfate [17]; § s−1 (mol/l)−1 , ∗ (mol/l)−1 .
spectrum of water (+) and of a 0.1 mol/l solution of Al2 (SO4 )3 in water (◦, •) at 25◦ C [20].
Open symbols indicate data from a difference method applied in time domain measurements,
closed symbols show data from frequency domain techniques. Lines are graphs of the De-
bye function (Eq. (3)) with subscript ”w” refering to water and of the two-Cole-Cole-term
function defined by Eq. (15).
in the solvent contribution to the complex dielectric spectrum are due to interactions
of the water molecules with the ionic species. A remarkable feature in the spectrum
of the electrolyte solution (Fig. 12) is the additional low-frequency relaxation with
−1
amplitude (0) − 1 and relaxation frequency (2πτ2 ) . This relaxation reveals di-
rectly the existence of dipolar ion complex structures with life times larger than the
reorientation times.
The relaxations in the solution spectrum are subject to a small distribution of
relaxation times. The spectrum, without conductivity contribution, has been repre-
sented assuming a sum of Cole-Cole terms [66]

1 − (∞) (0) − 1
(ν) = (∞) + (1−h1 )
+ (1−h2 )
. (15)
1 + (iωτ1 ) 1 + (iωτ2 )
These terms reflect a relaxation time distribution function G (τ ) which, when τ G (τ )
is plotted versus ln(τ /τi ), i = 1, 2, is symmetrically bell shaped around τ /τi = 1.
Here τ1 and τ2 denote the principal relaxation times and parameters h1 and h2 ,
0 ≤ h1 , h2 < 1 measure the width of the distribution function.
Despite of the clear indications of ion complex structures by the low-frequency
relaxation term in the dielectric spectra the finding of only one relaxation regime
for the ion processes is, on a first glance, a surprising result. It is common to all
dielectric studies of ion complex formation [18–29,67–70]. Absence of distinct relax-
ation terms for the different ion species in the dielectric spectra becomes particularly
evident when comparison to the corresponding ultrasonic spectra is made (Fig. 13).
−1
Interesting, the relaxation frequency (2πτ2 ) in the dielectric spectrum shown in
Fig. 13 is larger than the largest relaxation frequency in the ultrasonic excess ab-
sorption spectrum. Obviously, in the dielectric spectra of the electrolyte solutions
the complex formation/decay processes are short-circuited by the faster reoriental
motions.
Based on the Debye model of rotational diffusion [41] reorientation times for the
outer-outer-sphere, the outer-sphere, as well as the inner-sphere complexes have been
estimated which are too close to each other to allow for a clear separation of the
Figure 13. Ultrasonic excess absorption (◦) and dielectric loss spectrum (•) for the solution
of 0.1 mol/l Sc2 (SO4 )3 in water at 25◦ C [20].
broadband relaxation contributions from the different ion complex species [20]. Di-
electric spectroscopy thus yields direct evidence for the existence of ion pairs with
life times exceeding the reorientation times, respectively, but a deconvolution of the
experimental spectra is normally only possible when reasonable assumptions on the
underlying molecular processes are made.
4 Electrolyte solutions of monovalent anions
4.1 Evidence from the solvent contribution to the static permittivity

As revealed by the dielectric spectrum of the aluminium sulfate solution displayed
in Fig. 12 the solvent contribution 1 to the extrapolated static permittivity may fall
significantly below the solvent permittivity v (0) (= w (0)). The reduction in 1
is partly due to the dilution of the dipolar solvent by the solute. This part in the
polarization deficiency can be considered by a suitable mixture relation, e.g. the
Bruggeman formula [71]
1/3
v (0) v (0) − u
= (1 − v) (16)
(0) (0) − u
for the resulting permittivity (0) of a solution of spherical particles with volume
fraction v and frequency independent permittivity u in solvent with permittivity
v (0). In addition, two other effects may contribute to the reduction in 1 . One
effect is suggested by extrapolated static permittivity data as shown in Fig. 14.
The dielectric spectra of the bromide salt solutions for which the (0) data are
presented, within the frequency range of measurements, do not indicate contributions
from ion complexes, thus 1 = (0) with these systems. For the bromides of large
organic cations the (0) values slightly exceed the predictions of the Bruggeman
mixture relation (Eq. (16)). This tendency in the extrapolated static permittivity
seems to be characteristic to aqueous solutions of organic solutes and is assumed to
be due to hydrophobic interaction effects [74–76]. The (0) value of the alkali halide
solutions are smaller than predicted by Eq. (16) and, furtheron, the deviation from
the mixture relation increases with decreasing cation radius. This feature points at an
interaction between the dipole moment of the solvent molecules and the electric field
of the small cations. The preferential orientation of the dipole moments within the
Coulombic fields (Fig. 15) leads to a reduced orientation polarizability of the solvent,
usually named “dielectric saturation” [72,77]. We shall get back to saturation effects
later.
The other effect that leads to a reduction in the extrapolated static permittivity of
electrolyte solutions is featured by the (0) data for solutions of lithium chloride in
two different solvents, given in Fig. 16. For methanol solutions the reduction in the
permittivity ratio (0) /v (0) is considerably larger than for aqueous solutions. These
findings reflect a feature of the kinetic polarization deficiency [80–84] resulting from
a coupling of dielectric properties to the hydrodynamics of the conducting liquids.
An ion moving in a liquid, that is exposed to an external electric field, sets up
a nonuniform flow in its ambient solvent [85]. The dipole moments of the solvent
Figure 14. Extrapolated static permittivity (0) versus volume fraction v of so-
lute for 1 mol/l aqueous solutions of alkali bromides [72] as well as tetraalkylammo-
nium and azoniaspiroalkane bromides at 25◦ C: Me4 NBr, tetramethylammonium bromide;
Et4 NBr, tetraethylammonium bromide; Pr4 NBr, tetrapropylammonium bromide; Bu4 NBr,
tetrabutylammonium bromide; 4:4NBr, 5-azoniaspiro[4,4]nonane bromide; 5:5NBr, 6-
azoniaspiro[5,5]undecane bromide; 6:6NBr, 7-azoniaspiro[6,6]tridecane bromide [73]. The
dashed line is the graph of the Bruggeman mixture relation (Eq. (16)). The full line is
drawn to guide the eyes.
molecules are turned thereby in the direction opposed to the one given by the external
field. In the Hubbard-Onsager continuum theory a dielectric decrement
2 v (0) − v (∞)
δHO = στv (17)
3 0 v (0)
follows, where v (∞) and τv denote the extrapolated high-frequency permittivity and
dielectric relaxation time of the solvent, respectively. In deriving Eq. (17) perfect slip
boundary conditions on the solvent flow at the ion surfaces have been assumed. The
large differences between the (0) data for the two series of LiCl solutions in Fig. 16
obviously reflect the different relaxation times of the solvent (τv = (8.27 ± 0.05) ps,
water [46]; τv = (48.7 ± 1) ps, methanol [46]; 25◦ C).
Equation (17) allows the kinetic depolarization decrement to be calculated and,
considering also the small reduction in the (0) values from the dilution of the dipolar
solvent (Eq. (16)), the remaining polarization deficiency to be evaluated in terms
of dielectric saturation. The degree of saturation is expressed by numbers Z± of
Figure 15. Sketch of preferential orientation of dipolar solvent molecules in the Coulombic
field of small cations.
apparently irrotationally bound solvent molecules per cation or anion, respectively.

For aqueous solutions the Z+ values of some mono-, bi-, and trivalent cations [21]
are collected in Fig. 17 where the diameter of dielectrically saturated water shells,
relative to the ion diameter, is also shown graphically.
Among the monovalent ions only lithium and sodium induce a noticeable effect of
dielectric saturation. With the alkaline earth metal ions saturation corresponds with
roughly six completely irrotationally bound water molecules per cation and with
trivalent main group aluminium, yttrium, and lanthanium ions twelve to thirteen
water molecules per cation apparently do not contribute to the static permittivity of
Figure 16. Permittivity ratio (0)/v (0) as a function of volume fraction v of salt for
solutions of LiCl in water (• [77], v (0) = w (0) = 78.35 ± 0.05 [46]) and in methanol (◦
[78], v (0) = 32.64 ± 0.20 [46]) at 25◦ C. The dashed line represents the mixture relation
(Eq. (16)).
Figure 17. Numbers Z+ of apparently irrotationally bound water molecules per ion for
some mono-, di-, and trivalent cations [21] and graphical representation of the extent of
dielectric saturation: hatched areas show the saturated water shell around the ions the
crystallographic diameters of which are indicated by discs.
the solution. Quite remarkably the Z+ values of the transition metal ions Zn2+ , Cd2+
and In3+ are considerably smaller than those of the similarly sized Ca2+ , Sr2+ , and
Y3+ ions, respectively. These small Z+ values have been taken an indication of cation-
anion complex formation in the salt solutions containing transition metal ions. In
vacuum the electronic configuration of such ions with complete d shell, like that of
main group metal ions, involves a spherical charge distribution. In solution, however,
interactions with anions are likely promoted by the directed d10 electron orbitals, thus
increasing the tendency towards complex formation even with monovalent anions.
The effect of dielectric saturation is smaller around the ion complex structures with
reduced electric field strength than around separated ions with their comparatively
strong Coulombic field. Therefore, the decrement in (0) is smaller in solutions
with d10 cations than with equally sized d0 cations. Complex formation in aqueous
solutions of salts from transition metal cations and monovalent anions has been
verified by solute contributions to the complex dielectric spectrum [21] and also by
ultrasonic excess absorption spectra. An exceptional example is discussed in the next
section.
4.2 Uncommon complexation of zinc(II)chloride
Similar to aluminium sulfate aqueous solutions (Fig. 12), the dielectric spectra of
aqueous solutions of zinc chloride show two relaxation regions (Fig. 18). Again the
high-frequency region reflects the reorientational motions of the solvent molecules.
The additional low-frequency relaxation verifies in an obvious manner the existence
of (dipolar) ion complex structures in transition metal halide aqueous solutions, as
suggested from the 1 data of such systems (sect. 4.1). Because of the intriguing
thermodynamic, structural, and transport properties of zinc chloride solutions these
structures have been discussed for long time [86–88]. A multitude of different ion
complexes has been identified using a variety of experimental techniques. In general
the complex reaction scheme shown in Fig. 19 has to be considered when discussing
Figure 18. Real part 0 (ν) and negative imaginary part 00 (ν) of the dielectric spectrum of
water (+) and of a 2.04 mol/l solution of ZnCl2 in water (•) at 25◦ C [22,23]. Dashed lines
show the subdivision of the spectrum for the salt solution according to Eq. (15) with h2 ≡ 0.
Figure 19. Zinc(II)chloride complexation scheme in water (w).
the characteristics of zinc chloride aqueous solutions. The formation of mono-, bi-,
tri-, and tetrachloro complexes is well established now. All these species seem to
exist not only as contact ion complexes but also as solvent separated outer-sphere
species [89–92].
Following the above lines of reasoning (sect. 4.1) the extrapolated solvent contri-
bution 1 to the static permittivity can be evaluated in terms of the concentration
C0 of completely dissociated zinc ions. According to our arguments zinc chloride
ion complexes unlikely induce dielectric saturation effects. Let us assume the num-
ber Z+ of apparently irrotationally bound water molecules around the completely
dissociated Zn2+ ion to agree with that around the Mg2+ ion. The cation-water
distances (Zn2+ : 2.08 Å; Mg2+ : 2.11 Å [93]) and the apparent molar volumes at infi-
nite dilution (Zn2+ : -32.4 cm3 mol−1 ; Mg2+ : -32.0 cm3 mol−1 [94]) almost agree with
one another. The experimental 1 data can thus be evaluated in terms of the Zn2+
concentration. The relative Zn2+ content C0 /C following thereby is displayed in
Fig. 20 where also predictions from a reasonable set of of equilibrium constants Ki ,
i = 1, 2, 3, 4 [95] for the association scheme of zinc ions and chloride ions are shown.
In deriving this set of Ki values no distinction was made between inner sphere com-
plexes and their water-containing analoga. The transition between these species and
their outer-sphere analoga was assumed to be fast as compared to the transition be-
tween the complexes with different number of chloride ions. The agreement between
our data from the 1 values and the predictions from the equilibrium constants of
the multistep reaction scheme is striking. According to our expectations the relative
content of completely dissociated Zn2+ ions decreases substantially with C.
Most species in the zinc chloride complexation scheme (Fig. 19) are nondipolar or
only weakly dipolar. In the dichloro complex with linearly arranged chloride, zinc,
and chloride ions, in the planar trichloro complex, as well as in the tetrahedrally
structured tetrachloro complex the individual dipole moments largely compensate
Figure 20. Concentration ratios C0 /C(•) and C1 /C(◦) of completely dissociated Zn2+
ions and of (Zn(H2 O)Cl)+ complexes, respectively, as following from dielectric spectra of
aqueous solutions of ZnCl2 with salt concentration C [23]. The lines show the predictions
from a set of equilibrium constants [95] for the zinc chloride association scheme.
each other. Therefore, the solute contribution (0) − 1 (Fig. 18) to the static permit-
tivity of zinc chloride solutions appears to be mainly due to monochloro complexes.
We used the relation 2
0 2 3kB T
C1 = ((0) − 1 ) (18)
N 3 µ2
to derive the concentration C1 of monochloro complexes from the relaxation ampli-
tude (0) − 1 and the dipole moment µ of the ion pairs [23]. Here N is Avogadro’s
number and kB is the Boltzmann constant. Using the simple relation
µ=e·l (19)
for the dipole moment in solution, where e denotes the elementary charge and l the
cation-anion distance, perfect agreement of the C1 values with those from the set of
equilibrium constants Ki , i = 1, ..., 4 is observed (Fig. 20), if l = 4.2 Åis assumed.
This is the cation-anion distance in an outer-sphere complex. Hence, obviously, the
monochloro complex exists predominantly as solvent-separated species.
The ultrasonic absorption spectra of zinc chloride solutions extend over a broader
frequency band than a single Debye type relaxation term, thus indicating a dis-
tribution of relaxation times [30]. A relaxation time distribution had been already
inferred from previous ultrasonic measurements, in a reduced frequency range, of
zinc(II)halide aqueous solutions [96] and also from a combined ultrasonic and Bril-
Figure 21. Ultrasonic excess absorption spectrum for a solution of 0.8 mol/l ZnCl2 in water
at 25◦ C. The subdivision of the spectrum into three Debye relaxation terms is indicated by
dashed lines. The full line represents the sum of these terms [30].
louin scattering study of zinc chloride hydrated melts [97]. Three terms with dis-
crete relaxation time are necessary to represent the experimental spectra adequately
(Fig. 21). Consistency of the dependencies of relaxation parameters upon the salt
concentration, however, requires even four Debye relaxation terms.
As a four-Debye-term model comprises too many unknown parameters the spectra
have been evaluated assuming a reduced reaction scheme
Zn2+ + 4Cl− *
) (Zn2+ )∗ + 4Cl− *
) (ZnCl)+ + 3Cl−
−
* ZnCl2 + 2Cl *
) ) (ZnCl3 )− + Cl− (20)
* (ZnCl4 )2−
)
in which (Zn2+ )∗ is assumed an activated zinc ion, e.g. an ion with one hydration
molecule less than Zn2+ . Relating the rate constants and reaction volumes of the
coupled equilibrium to one another the number of unknown parameters in the regres-
sion analysis of the ultrasonic spectra has been reduced so that reliable rate constants
and reaction volumes followed from the fitting procedures [30].
Alternatively, the multitude of proposed ion complex structures (Fig. 19) and the
finding of precritical behaviour for concentrated zinc chloride aqueous solutions [98]
has suggested the idea of rapidly fluctuating diffuse ion clusters rather than of stoi-
chiometrically defined species [31]. The Romanov-Solov’ev model of noncritical con-
centration fluctuations [99–101] has been implemented. But, even if an additional
Debye relaxation is taken into account, this model did not satisfactorily apply to the
spectra at all concentrations. However, a superior analytical description of the exper-
imental excess absorption spectra is reached with the Dissado-Hill (“DH”) relaxation
spectral function with only four unknown parameters (Fig. 22). This function has
been originally derived for a uniform representation of a diversity of dielectric spec-
Figure 22. Ultrasonic excess absorption spectra for aqueous solutions of

ZnCl2 (◦, 0.3mol/l; •, 0.8mol/l) at 25◦ C. The lines are graphs of the Dissado-Hill function
(Eq. (21)) with the parameter values given in Table 2.
tra [102,103]. Rewritten to apply to the sonic absorption per wavelength it reads
(αλ)exc (21)
 
1−nDH Z1 −(1−mDH )
1 t
= ADH Im  lim t−nDH 1− dt .
1 + i ωτDH →0 1 − i ωτDH

The parameter values of the zinc chloride solutions are collected in Table 2. Within
the framework of the Dissado-Hill model the ions are assumed to form clusters rather
than well-defined complexes. Relaxations within the clusters are characterized by
the principal relaxation time τDH . The parameter nDH (0≤ nDH ≤1) describes the
correlations within the clusters. The limiting values nDH = 0 and nDH = 1 repre-
sent relaxation processes that are completely independent and strongly correlated,
C ADH τDH nDH mDH B

mol/l 10−3 ns 10−12 s
0.1 1.4 ± 0.1 4.5 ± 0.3 0 ± 0.02 0.88 ± 0.02 32.6 ± 0.1
0.2 5.1 ± 0.5 14.0 ± 0.7 0.34 ± 0.03 0.90 ± 0.02 32.7 ± 0.2
0.3 18.9 ± 0.3 14.5 ± 0.3 0.25 ± 0.01 0.87 ± 0.01 33.7 ± 0.1
0.35 22.8 ± 0.7 18.0 ± 0.6 0.31 ± 0.02 0.90 ± 0.02 33.4 ± 0.2
0.4 36.8 ± 0.6 16.0 ± 0.4 0.24 ± 0.01 0.89 ± 0.01 33.6 ± 0.2
0.5 56.5 ± 1.1 15.3 ± 0.6 0.23 ± 0.02 0.85 ± 0.02 34.1 ± 0.2
0.6 85.7 ± 1.1 14.7 ± 0.3 0.20 ± 0.01 0.90 ± 0.01 34.6 ± 0.1
0.8 119.1 ± 2.5 14.3 ± 0.6 0.23 ± 0.02 0.94 ± 0.02 34.7 ± 0.4
Table 2. Parameters of the Dissado-Hill spectral function (Eq. (21)) for aqueous solutions
of zinc(II) chloride at 25◦ C and salt concentration C [31].
respectively. The parameter mDH (0≤ mDH ≤1) reflects correlations between dif-
ferent clusters with mDH = 1 constituting the limiting situation of ideally connected
relaxation sequences in the cluster system. Such alternative considerations of the
sound absorption spectra of electrolyte solutions have been currently renewed by a
distribution function theory in which the sonic relaxations in the spectra are related
to the long-range concentration fluctuations within the liquid [32]. We mention that
the ultrasonic absorption spectra of 1:1 valent tetraalkylammonium bromide aqueous
solutions exhibit strong indications of precritical fluctuations in the local concentra-
tion [33].
4.3 Other 2:1 valent salts

Present ultrasonic spectrometry is sufficiently sensitive to indicate the small-amplitude
relaxations due to ion complex formation in aqueous solutions of 2:1 valent salts [34,
35,50]. For a transition-metal-chloride solution an example is given in Fig. 4. A spec-
trum with even smaller relaxation amplitude is shown in Fig. 23 where the ultrasonic
excess absorption for a solution of an alkaline earth metal chloride is displayed versus
frequency. All relevant excess absorption spectra measured so far can be well rep-
resented by a single Debye-type relaxation term (Eq. (7)). Parameters as resulting
from a regression analysis of the spectra are given in Table 3.
The relaxation times τ of the solutions are strikingly similar. Obviously, the τ
values do not noticeably depend upon the cation radius and on the electronic struc-
ture of the cation. As contact ion pair formation sensitively reflects the properties
of the cations the observed relaxation is unlikely due to a process that involves in-
Figure 23. Ultrasonic excess absorption spectrum for a 1 mol/l solution of SrCl2 in water
at 25◦ C [35]. In order to disclose the excess absorption not to be due to systematic errors in
the measurements, data from different specimen cells and apparatus are marked by figure
symbols. The line represents a Debye relaxation term (Eq. (7)) with the parameter values
given in Table 3.
Salt Cec r+ C c A A/C τ B

−10
10 m mol/l m/s 10−3 cm3 mol−1 ns 10−12 s
[104] ±0.2% ±0.1% ±20% ±20% ±20% ±2%
T =298.15 K
MgCl2 2p6 0.66 1.0 1604.4 0.29 0.29 0.61 35.7
CaCl2 3p6 0.99 1.0 1587.0 0.59 0.59 0.37 35.8
SrCl2 4p6 1.12 1.0 1585.9 0.58 0.58 0.46 32.4
NiCl2 3p6 d8 0.69 0.8 1566.9 0.67 0.84 0.38 35.1
CuCl2 3p6 d9 0.72 0.5 1529.9 7.6 15.2 0.35 34.0
Mg(NO3 )2 2p6 0.66 1.0 1577.0 0.4 0.4 0.44 33.2
Cu(NO3 )2 3p6 0.99 1.0 1556.4 22.6 22.6 0.22 36.6
T =283.15 K
Ca(NO3 )2 3p6 0.99 0.2 1465.0 2.85 14.2 0.36 49.4
0.5 1486.2 12.7 25.4 0.32 49.0
1.0 1524.1 30.9 30.9 0.32 52.8
1.5 1563.0 49.2 32.8 0.34 55.4
C=1 mol/l
T, K
Ca(NO3 )2 3p6 0.99 283.15 1524.1 30.9 30.9 0.32 52.8
288.15 1536.2 28.8 28.8 0.28 45.5
293.15 1547.0 25.0 25.0 0.25 40.6
298.15 1556.4 22.6 22.6 0.22 36.6
Table 3. Parameters of the relaxation spectral function (Eqs. (6,7)) for ultrasonic ab-
sorption spectra of 2:1 valent salts [34,35]; Cec, cation electronic configuration; r+ , cation
radius; c, sound velocity of solution.
ner sphere complexes. This argument is supported by previous results for the outer
sphere-inner sphere complex equilibrium of sulfates in aqueous solutions, for which
τ = 16 µs was found for Ni2+ , τ = 1.3 µs for Mg2+ and τ = 1.2 ns only for Cu2+
(0.5 mol/l, 20◦ C [105]). For the chlorides τ = 0.38 ns for Ni2+ , τ = 0.61 ns for Mg2+ ,
and τ = 0.35 ns for Cu2+ (0.5 mol/l≤C≤1 mol/l, 25◦ C, Table 3). Furthermore, the
τ values for Ca(NO3 )2 solutions at 10◦ C do not reveal a concentration dependence
(Table 3), which is an indication of a unimolecular reaction. Estimation of the relax-
ation rate for the process of ion encounter, using the Debye-Eigen-Fuoss theory [106],
predicts a relaxation term well above our frequency range of measurements. Since, on
the other hand, the formation of outer-outer sphere complexes, which is even ques-
tioned with 2:2 valent electrolyte solutions (sect. 3.1), unlikely occurs in solutions of
2:1 valent salts, the Debye-type relaxation term has been assigned to the equilibrium
(M2+ · · · L− )aq *
) (M(H2 O)L)+
aq (22)
between the complex of encounter, (M2+ · · · L− )aq and the outer-sphere complex.
The difference between the molar amplitudes A/C of the CuCl2 solutions and the
NiCl2 solutions is striking. Like NiCl2 , solutions of the transition metal chlorides
MnCl2 , FeCl2 , and CoCl2 with 3p6 d5 , 3p6 d6 , and 3p6 d7 , electronic structure, respec-
tively, do not show noticeable ultrasonic excess absorption in the relevant frequency
range [50]. Ion complex formation of the subgroup metal ion Cu2+ seems to be stabi-
lized by the Jahn-Teller effect. There are indications of an additional low-frequency
relaxation term in the spectra of CuCl2 solutions which has not been covered by the
measurements because transducer electrodes of the resonator cells were corroded by
the samples [50]. Likely this low-frequency term reflects the equilibrium between the
ion pairs and the outer-sphere complexes.
Also striking is the substantial increase in the amplitude A of calcium salt solutions
when chloride is substituted by nitrate (Table 3). We suppose stronger interactions
of (Ca2+ )aq with the nitrate ion, due to its lone pair electrons and its delocalized π
orbital [104], than with the chloride ions with its spherical s2 p6 electron configuration.
An unexplained result is the considerably smaller difference in the amplitudes of
MgCl2 and Mg(NO3 )2 solutions.
5 Conclusions
Multistep associations of ions have been among the first “immeasurable fast” reac-
tions [1] that have been effectively measured and described in detail [9,10]. Neverthe-
less still today much interest is directed towards these reactions. Though the Eigen-
Tamm mechanism has been verified by broadband ultrasonic spectrometry of scan-
dium sulfate solutions [17] the existence of outer-outer sphere complexes in solutions
of 2:2 valent salts is still under discussion [32]. As early evaluations of experimental
spectra, without any assistance from computer facilities, used a slightly incorrect
high-frequency background term in the ultrasonic excess absorption spectra, a distri-
bution of relaxation times may have been simulated. More recent broadband spectra
of MnSO4 solutions (Fig. 9) reveal only two Debye-type relaxation terms within the
frequency range of measurements. These terms are assigned to the coupled equi-
libria between completely dissociated ions and outer-sphere complexes and between
the latter and contact ion pairs. Halides of second subgroup metals, such as zinc
chloride, display a broad variety of ion complex structures in solution. Their spectra
have indeed been discussed in terms of a complex equilibrium between stoichiomet-
rically well-defined species [30] but have been also considered assuming fluctuating
ion clusters with intra- and intercluster correlations [31]. Small-amplitude ultrasonic
relaxation terms have been revealed for solutions of 2:1 valent electrolytes and have
been related to the equilibrium between the complex of encounter and the outer-
sphere complexes [34,35]. This equilibrium is of significance also for biochemistry as
it may interfere with other association mechanisms, like counter ion condensation on
polyelectrolytes, carbohydrate-cation interactions [107], as well as inclusion complex
formation [108].
Acknowledgments
We are indebted to the technicians of the institute for their continual support with
precision engineering components, electronic devices, computer facilities, and figure
layout.
References
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Copyright notice:
Figure 2 reused from Ref. [43]; Fig. 3 reused with permission from Ref. [48], Figs. 12 and 13
reused from Ref. [20], Copyright 1987 Elsevier; Fig. 18 reused with permission from Ref. [22],
Copyright 1987 American Chemical Society; Fig. 20 reused from Ref. [23], Copyright 1987
Elsevier.
Liquids: Formation of complexes

and complex dynamics
Udo Kaatze1 and Ralph Behrends2
1
2
Fakultät für Physik, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Abstract. Acoustical relaxation spectra, measured in the frequency range between roughly
104 and 5·109 Hz, are discussed in view of the formation of mesoscopic molecular structures,
like small complexes, stacks, and micelles, as well as of microheterogeneous liquid structures,
as characteristic for noncritical and critical concentration fluctuations in binary systems. A
variety of results is presented to show the capability of the method. An extended version of
the model of micelle formation/decay kinetics is given that accounts for the special features
of surfactant solutions near their critical micelle concentration. Also a unifying model
of noncritical concentration fluctuations, that includes all previous theories, is shown to
favourably apply the experimental findings. Evidence is presented indicating the need for
a comprehensive theoretical treatment of systems revealing both, critical micelle formation
and critical demixing properties.
1 Introduction
Liquids owe their fascinating and diverse features to molecular interaction energies
on the order of the thermal energy. Thermal motions thus prevent liquids from
establishing long-range order. Additionally, short-range order fluctuates rapidly. Let
us consider water, the omnipresent chemical on our planet, as an example. Water
is among the associating liquids. As the water molecule is capable of forming four
hydrogen bonds, liquid water establishes a percolating three-dimensional hydrogen
bond network. Due to thermal agitation a single hydrogen bond fluctuates with
correlation time on the order of 0.1 to 1 ps [1]. Even the dielectric relaxation time of
water, which reflects the period required for the reorientation of the dipolar molecules
through a significant angle [2], is as small as 10 ps at room temperature [3]. Hence
liquids are characterized by the rapid fluctuations of their short-range order. In order
to understand liquid properties we need to investigate their molecular motions.
In addition to the establishment of the hydrogen bond network, mesoscopic mol-
cular structures may be formed in aqueous solutions and in mixtures of water with
other constituents. The knowledge of such structures and of their formation and de-
cay processes is most important for our understanding of self-organization in liquids
368 U. Kaatze and R. Behrends
with relevance to many phenomena in chemistry, physical chemistry and biochem-

istry, as well as for chemical engineering and process control. In aqueous systems a
dominant factor in structure formation is the hydrophilic and hydrophobic interac-
tions. The pressure exerted on hydrophobic parts of the non-aqueous constituents
to reduce contact with water molecules leads to the formation of clusters, stacks,
micelles, and bilayer membranes [4,5]. A variety of liquid mixtures minimizes energy
by precritical or critical demixing [6–11]. Particularly exiting are systems forming
molecular aggregates and simultaneously exhibiting demixing behaviour. Examples
are solutions of amphiphiles which display a critical micelle concentration and also a
critical demixing point [12–17].
In this review the molecular dynamics of such mesoscopic supramolecular liquid
structures are discussed. We focus on evidence from broadband acoustical spectrome-
try as ourdays experimental techniques in that field are still based on pioneering work
in Göttingen and especially also at the Dritte Physikalische Institut. We mention the
benchmark papers by Kurtze, Tamm, and Eigen on the ultrasonic spectrometry of
multivalent salt solutions revealing the stepwise dissociation of ions [18–20], by Plaß
who was among the first to reach hypersonic measurement frequencies [21,22], and by
Eggers who made the resonator method popular for liquid spectrometry [23]. Sonic
waves which couple to thermodynamic parameters and to transport properties, such
as the molecular volume and the shear viscosity, hold the potential to contribute to
an elucidation of the formation of the complex structures mentioned above. Sonic sig-
nals probe the native systems. Therefore, no special labels or markers are necessary,
as are required in many other sophisticated methods.
One of the advantages of acoustical spectrometry is the fact that thermal equi-
librium of the sample under study is virtually kept during measurements, because
only incremental perturbations result from pressure and temperature oscillations as-
sociated with the sonic waves. Another favourable feature is the almost universal
character of the parameters interacting with sonic signals. The universal applicabil-
ity of acoustical spetrometry, however, is connected to an often non-specific nature
of results. It is therefore imperative to vary the systems to be investigated in a
considered way, for example by variation of temperature, concentration, or solvent
composition, or to supplement measurements with data from other methods.
2 Experimental aspects
2.1 Fundamentals of acoustical spectrometry

If the small loss from heat conduction is neglected the propagation constant
γ = α + ıβ (1)
of longitudinal waves in a liquid with density % and shear viscosity ηs follows from
the Navier-Stokes equation [24] as
−ω%
γ2 = . (2)
K + 43 ı ωηs
Liquids: Formation of complexes and complex dynamics 369
Here α is the attenuation coefficient, β = 2π/λ is the wave number with λ = c/ν
denoting the wavelength, c is the sound velocity, ν the frequency, and ı2 = −1. K is
the complex adiabatic compression modulus, given by
K = κ−1
S (0) + ı ωηv , (3)
where
1 ∂V
κS (0) = lim − (4)
ω→0 V ∂p S
is the static adiabatic compressibility at very small angular frequency ω = 2πν, and
ηv is the volume viscosity. At very small attenuation (α β) the imaginary part of
Eq. (2) yields
2π 2 ν 2 4

α= 3 ηs + ηv . (5)
c % 3
Frequently it is assumed that, within the frequency range of measurement, roughly
10 kHz ≤ ν ≤ 10 GHz, the shear viscosity is independent of frequency but the volume
viscosity
ηv (ν) = ∆ηv (ν) + ηv (∞) (6)
may be composed of two parts, of which ∆ηv (ν) displays relaxation characteristics
whereas ηv (∞) does not depend upon frequency. The sonic attenuation coefficient
α(ν) = αexc (ν) + B 0 ν 2 (7)
thus contains a part with quadratic frequency dependence and coefficient
2π 2 4

B0 = 3 ηs + ηv (∞) (8)
c % 3
and an excess contribution

2π 2
αexc (ν) = ∆ηv (ν) , (9)
c3 %
which is of primary interest in acoustical spectrometry. Because of the frequency
dependence of the asymptotic high-frequency “background” contribution (7) it is
convenient to display experimental spectra in the frequency normalized format
α αexc (ν)
= + B0 , (10)
ν2 ν2
accentuating the low-frequency part of the spectrum. If interest is focussed on the
high-frequency regime and if, particularly, comparison with theoretical models and
their thermodynamic parameters is derived an (αλ)exc -versus-ν plot is appropriate.
It is obtained from subtracting the asymptotic high-frequency contribution
Bν = B 0 cν (11)
from the total attenuation per wavelength, αλ.

Figure 1. Ultrasonic attenuation spectrum in the frequency normalized format for n-

dodecanol at 25◦ C [32]. The curve is the graph of a relaxation spectral function with two
Debye-type relaxation terms. The dashed line shows the α/ν 2 value following from Eq. (12),
assuming a frequency independent shear viscosity.
Constancy of the shear viscosity within the frequency range of measurements is not
fulfilled with all liquids. Examples are polymer melts [26,27], the frequency dependent
shear viscosity of which reflects modes of chain conformational isomerisation [27–
30]. Another example is the chain isomerisation of n-alkanes [31] and alcohols [32].
Figure 1 shows a frequency normalized plot of the ultrasonic attenuation spectrum
of n-dodecanol at 25◦ C. Also given by the dashed line is the contribution
α 8π 2
= ηs (0) (12)
ν 2 ηs0 3c3 %
that would result on assumption of a frequency independent shear viscosity ηs (0)
as measured with a capillary viscosimeter or a falling ball viscosimeter. The find-
ing of experimental α/ν 2 data smaller than α/ν 2 η is a direct indication of the
s0
shear viscosity of n-dodecanol to be subject to a relaxation. Shear wave impedance
spectrometry [33] has confirmed this conclusion by revealing a fequency dependent
complex shear viscosity
ηs (ν) = ηs0 (ν) − ıηs00 (ν) . (13)
In Eq. (13) the real part ηs0 (ν) represents the irreversible viscous molecular processes,
whereas the negative imaginary part ηs00 (ν) considers the reversible elastic mecha-
nisms of the visco-elastic liquid. Figure 2 presents the shear viscosity of n-dodecanol,
measured between some MHz and about 100 MHz, in a suggestive complex plane
representation. The data evidently fit to the semicircular arc which is given as the
graphical representation of the Debye-type relaxation spectral function [34]
As
Rs (ν) = ηs (∞) + (14)
1 + ı ωτs
Figure 2. Complex plane representation of the frequency dependent shear viscosity of

n-dodecanol at 25◦ C [32]. Figure symbols indicate data from different shear impedance
resonator cells. The circular arc is a plot of the spectral function defined by Eq. (14) with
the values for the parameters ηs (0), ηs (∞), and τs found by a nonlinear regression analysis.
with discrete relaxation time. In this function ηs (∞) is the extrapolated high-
frequency shear viscosity and As = ηs (0)−ηs (∞) is the relaxation amplitude. Hence,
in general, a frequency dependent shear viscosity has to be taken into account by
using
2πν 2 4

α(ν) = 3 ηs (ν) + ηv (ν) (15)
c % 3
as the more general version of Eq. (5).
2.2 Attenuation spectrometry

Within the frequency range from 12 kHz to 4.6 GHz, which is currently available for
the acoustical spectrometry of liquids, the wavelength λ of the sonic field within the
sample varies by a factor of about 4·105 . Due to the quadratic frequency dependence
of the asymptotic high-frequency term in α (Eq. (7)) the variation in the attenuation
coefficient is even as large as (4 · 105 )2 = 1.6 · 1011 . It is thus impossible to cover
the frequency range with only one method of measurement. The spectra discussed
in this review have been obtained applying two different techniques and numerous
specimen cells, each one matched to a frequency range and to the sample properties,
in order to reach a maximum sensitivity and to reduce experimental errors to as
small as possible values.
At low frequencies (ν . 20 MHz), where normally α is small, the resonator principle
is appropriate as it is based on convoluting the acoustical path via multiple reflections,
hereby increasing the effective pathlength of interaction with the sample. Calibration
measurements using a reference liquid with carefully adjusted sound velocity and
density are necessary in order to correct the measured data for intrinsic resonator
loss. Spherical resonator cells [35] as well as cylindrically shaped cavities for quasi-
one-dimensional wave propagation are in use. Popular are biplanar cavities with both
Figure 3. Cross section of a plano-concave resonator cell [37]. 1, sample volume; 2, planar
circular piezoelectric transducer crystal with coaxially evaporated films of chrome and gold
constituting the electrodes; 3, transducer disc as 2 but concavely shaped with radius of
curvature =2 m; 4, layer of silicone rubber with embedded bronze strips providing electrical
contact between the transducer front and the holding frame; 5, crystal setting; 6, spring
contact; 7, cell jacket with 8, channel for circulating thermostat fluid; 9, inlet and 10,
outlet for the sample liquid; 11, sealing O-ring; 12, base plate; 13, main frame fixed with
respect to 12; 14, adjustable frame with 15, ball joint; 16, precisely adjustable screw with
17, counteracting spring; 18, movable frame fixed against radial dispacements and tilting
by 19, ball-bush guides; 20, gauge block establishing the distance between 13 and 18; 21,
locking device; 22 and 23, thermostatic channels; 24, thermostatic shield.
Figure 4. Construction of a variable-path-length cell for measurements between 0.6 and

4.6 GHz [42]. 1, cavity for sample cell with thermostatic jacket (not shown); 2 and 3, hole for
inlet and outflow of sample; 4, sapphire rod serving as delay line and holding the piezoelectric
zinc oxide transducer layer on its rear face; 5, mount for 4; 6, spring clamped electrical
contact; 7, coaxial line; 8, plastic disc supporting the inner conductor of 7; 9, N-type
connector; 10, T-branch; 11, high precision ball-bush guide; 12, specially honed and lapped
bush; 13, bush; 14, piezo-translator; 15, backlash-free joint; 16, as 11; 17, finely honed and
lapped pin; 18, sliding carriage; 19, mounting plate; 20, finely polished reference plane; 21,
ball-and-socket joint; 22, adjustment device; 23, differential screws for sensitive adjustment
of the sapphire rod direction; 24, ball gudgeon preventing the sample cell from rotating; 25,
spring for the ball-and-socket joint 21; 26, thermostatic channels.
faces formed by piezoelectrical transducers [36]. In order to reduce diffraction losses

plano-concave [37] and biconcave devices [38,39] are also employed. As an illustration,
a detail drawing of a plano-concave cell is shown in Fig. 3. In many applications the
focussing effect of concavely shaped faces includes further favourable features, such
as a reduction of undesired effects from disturbances due to small changes in the
resonator adjustment on variation of temperature and superior mode spectrum as
compared to the biplanar cell.
In the upper frequency range (ν & 10 MHz) absolute α measurements are enabled
by transmitting pulse-modulated sonic waves through a cell of variable sample length.
The specimen cells mainly differ from one another by piezoelectric transmitter and
reciever unit and by their sample volume [40–42] which, because of the smaller wave-
length, may be much smaller at high frequencies. As an example the construction of
the variable-path-length cell for hypersonic measurements between 0.6 and 4.6 GHz
is presented in Fig. 4.
Figure 5. Sonic excess attenuation spectra for aqueous solutions of D-fructose at 25◦ C [44].
The saccharide concentrations are 4, 0.5 mol/l; , 0.7 mol/l; ◦, 1 mol/l; , 1.5 mol/l. The
lines represent a relaxation spectral function with three Debye-type relaxation terms and
with parameter values from a nonlinear fitting procedure.
Basically ourdays principles of measurement are the same as in early acoustical re-
laxation studies [43]. More sophisticated liquid spectrometry is enabled by a higher
precision of the cell constructions, by advanced electronics, and by computer con-
trolled measuring routines. Mechanical stability offers a 10 nm resolution in the cell
length, which is mandatory for measurements in the GHz region where the wavelength
is on the order of 300 nm and where the extraordinary large attenuation coefficient
allows for small variations in the sample length only [42]. Modern electronics enable
progressive measurement routines, scanning the complete transfer function of res-
onators to properly consider effects from higher order modes and running routinely
calibrations in the variable-path-length method. Automatic measuring procedures
finally facilitate multiple measurements for the reduction of statistical errors. Exam-
ples of broadband attenuation spectra are shown in Fig. 5.
2.3 Sound velocity dispersion

According to the Kramers-Kronig relations acoustical attenuation originating from
relaxation processes is associated with a dispersion in the sound velocity c, which
could be also utilized for liquid spectrometry. Normally, however, the dispersion in
c is small and it is notoriously difficult to reach, in a significant frequency range, a
sufficiently high accuracy in the sound velocity measurements. But since the sound
velocity follows as a byproduct from the attenuation coefficient spectrometry, it can
be used to consider the dispersion corresponding with large sonic absorption. Figure 6
shows the dispersion in c that is related to the formation of ion complexes in an
aqueous solution of zinc chloride [45]. The total dispersion step of that system
amounts to c(∞) − c(0) = 0.01 · c(0) which should not be neglected in the evaluation
procedures.
Figure 6. Sound velocity spectrum of a solution of 0.4 mol/l ZnCl2 in water at 25◦ C [45].
The full line represents the dispersion in c as calculated from the corresponding excess
attenuation spectrum.
3 Complexes and aggregates
3.1 Small complexes, stacks

Addition of calcium salts to carbohydrate solutions leave spectra of some systems
virtually unchanged, whereas significant effects result for others, among them solu-
tions of D-fructose and D-xylose [46] as well as methyl-β-D-arabinopyranoside and
1,6-anhydro-β-glucopyranoside [47]. Figure 7 indicates the substantial effect of CaCl2
on the sonic excess attenuation spectrum of a solution of D-xylose in water. These
changes in the ultrasonic spectra are assigned to Ca2+ complex formations with the
carbohydrate (ch). Interactions between carbohydrates and cations are ubiquituous
in nature and are believed to be significant in biochemistry. A detailed analysis
of the acoustical spectra of carbohydrate solutions with added calcium salts reveals
a stepwise complexation mechanism [46–48], in accordance with the Eigen-Winkler
model [49]
(ch)aq + Ca2+ aq
ch · · · Ca2+ aq
ch − Ca2+ aq
ch ≡ Ca2+ aq . (16)

In this model ch · · · Ca2+ aq denotes a solvent-separated outer-sphere complex,

ch − Ca2+ aq is a monodentate contact complex in which the cation interacts with

the lone electrons of a carbohydrate ring, and ch ≡ Ca2+ aq is a tridentate complex
in which the cation interacts with lone electrons of three carbohydrate oxygens as
sketched in Fig. 8.
Another example of carbohydrate complexation is the formation of cyclodextrin in-
clusion complexes. Cyclodextrins are cyclic glucosyl oligomers in which the monosac-
charide rings are α-(1,4) linked. The cycloamyloses consist of six, seven or eight glu-
copyranose units (α-, β-, or γ-cyclodextrin, respectively), forming a truncated cone
with a more hydrophobic inner cavity [50]. The latter allows the cyclic oligomers to
Figure 7. Ultrasonic excess attenuation spectra for aqueous solutions of 1 mol/l D-xylose
at 25◦ C without CaCl2 (◦) and with 1 mol/l CaCl2 added (•). Dotted and dashed lines
indicate the subdivision of the former and the latter spectrum, respectively, in Debye-type
relaxation terms. Solid lines represent the sum of these terms, respectively [46].
form inclusion complexes with a variety of molecules [51–55] and ions [56–60], includ-
ing drugs [61,62]. Due to the hydrophilic outer surface of the cyclodextrin cone the
complexes with guest molecules are soluble in water. Cyclodextrins are thus used to
enhance or provide the solubility of molecules or organic ions, they act as stabilizers,
selective agents, molecular recognition systems and also as capsules for the controlled
delivery of specific molecules, with wide fields of applications.
Recently α-cyclodextrin (α-CD)-iodide (I− ) complex formation has been found [60]
that follows the simple equilibrium
kf
α − CD + I−
r α − CD · I− (17)
k
where α − CD · I− denotes the monoiodide inclusion complex and k f and k r are

the forward and reverse rate constants, respectively, related to one another by the
Figure 8. Structure of a tridentate calcium

ion-anhydroglucopyranoside complex.
Figure 9. Scheme of relaxation process associated with a chemical equilibrium between

species X and species Y.
equilibrium constant
K = k f /k r . (18)
Within the framework of the simple reaction scheme shown in Fig. 9, the species
on both sides of Eq. (17) differ from one another by the volume difference ∆V and
the enthalpy difference ∆H. They are separated from one another by the enthalpy
]
barriers ∆HX and ∆HY] = ∆HX ]
+ ∆H, where normally ∆H ∆HX ]
, thus ∆HY] ≈
] − −
∆HX . Here X and Y denote α − CD + I and α − CD · I , respectively. The van’t
Hoff equation
d ln K ∆H
−1
=− (19)
dT R
relates the equilibrium constant to the enthalpy difference ∆H, indicating that, ac-
cording to our expectations, the larger the reaction enthalpy ∆H the larger K, that
is the more the equilibrium is shifted to the right-hand side of Eq. (17).
The thermal activation relaxation scheme of Fig. 9 predicts ultrasonic excess at-
tenuation that features Debye-type relaxation characteristics
Aωτ
(αλ)exc = RD (ν) = (20)
1 + ω2 τ 2
with the relaxation time τ given by
τ −1 = k f [α − CD] + I− + K −1

(21)
and the relaxation amplitude following as
πΓc(∞)
A= ∆VS2 . (22)
RT
Figure 10. Amplitude of the sonic relaxation term reflecting the complex formation in
aqueous solutions of 0.1 mol/l α-cyclodextrin with potassium iodide at 25◦ C displayed versus
salt concentration CKI [60].
Here Γ is a stoichiometric factor, which for the above equilibrium is given by

−1 −1 −1
Γ−1 = [α − CD] + I− + α − CD · I− , (23)
and ∆VS denotes the adiabatic reaction volume
Λ∞
∆VS = ∆H − ∆V (24)
% Cp∞
with the limiting high-frequency values Λ∞ and Cp∞ of the thermal expansion coef-
ficient and the specific heat at constant pressure, respectively. Taking into account
that the concentrations of the uncomplexed and complexed species are related to one
another by the total cyclodextrin and iodide concentrations, the amplitude A of the
ultrasonic relaxation term reflecting scheme (17) can be well described by relations
(22) and (23) if the reasonable values K = 50 (mol/l)−1 and ∆VS = 5.4 cm3 /mol are
assumed (Fig. 10).
Another interesting association mechanism is the formation of stacks from purine
bases, assumed to be relevant in biology, because it constitutes the dominant in-
teraction maintaining the secondary structure of biopolymers, such as DNA. Purine
bases are polyaromatic ring molecules with hydrophilic sites mainly at the periphery
and largely hydrophobic upper and lower faces. In order to prevent these faces from
contact with water, the disc shaped bases form stacks in aqueous solutions. As with
amphiphilic surfactants condensing to micelles, the self-aggregation is controlled by
an isodesmic (sequential) reaction scheme
kif
N1 − Ni
Ni+1 , i = 1, 2, . . . (25)
kir
Figure 11. Frequency normalized ultrasonic spectra for aqueous solutions of 6-

methylpurine without HCl (◦, 0.6 mol/l, pH=6.8) and with HCl added (•, 0.55 mol/l, pH=2)
at 20◦ C [64].
where Ni denotes a multimer made of i monomers. For the stack formation, however,
the shape of the size distribution function of the aggregates is different from that
of micelles, particularly as there are no geometrical restrictions for the stack size
[63]. Figure 11 shows ultrasonic attenuation spectra for aqueous solutions of 6-
methyl-purine without and with HCl added [64]. The significant effect of pH upon
the attenuation data below 3 MHz suggests the low-frequency relaxation term to be
due to the proton exchange of the ampholytic 6-methylpurine molecules. The term at
higher frequencies has been assigned to the stacking of the polyaromatic molecules.
Unfortunately no clear evidence resulted for a preference of the sequential isodesmic
reaction scheme (Eq. (25)) or the random isodesmic scheme
f
kij
Ni + Nj
Ni+j , i, j = 1, 2, . . . , (26)
r
kij
because, within the concentration range available in the measurements, both models
predict similar concentration dependencies for the relaxation times.
3.2 Micelles
The micelle formation/decay kinetics of nonionic surfactant solutions forming al-
most globularly shaped micelles with mean aggregation number m larger than about
50 (proper micelles), typically corresponding with critical micelle concentration cmc
smaller than 10−2 mol/l, can be also well described by the sequential isodesmic
scheme of coupled reactions defined by Eq. (25). It is assumed that the monomer
concentration [N1 ] is much higher than that of any aggregate so that direct associ-
ation of oligomers according to Eq. (26) with i, j > 1 can be neglected. Aniansson
and Wall [65,66] have introduced a symmetrically bell-shaped nearly Gaussian size
distribution
r
Ni+1 − kir Ni / Ni = − (i − m) k r /σ 2

ki+1 (27)
ˆ ˜
Figure 12. Distribution of the equilibrium concentration N̄i of aggregates from i
monomers for proper micelle systems (full line). Dashed and dotted lines show the slow
and fast response, respectively, of the surfactant system to external disturbances.

as sketched in Fig. 12. Here Ni denotes the equilibirium concentration of species
Ni , k r is the mean reverse rate constant for micelle sizes around the mean m̄ and σ 2
is the variance of the size distribution. Using Eq. (27) it is assumed that each step
in the series of reactions is characterized by a well defined free energy change
∆Gi = RT ln (Ki ) (28)
as following from the van’t Hoff equation (Eq. (19)). Here ∆Gi = ∆Hi − T ∆Si and
Ki = kif /kir .
On the basis of the Aniansson-Wall model, the Teubner-Kahlweit theory [67,68]
predicts sonic spectra with two Debye-type relaxation terms. These terms can be
identified in a suggestive manner with two modes in the reformation of the equilibrium
distribution of aggregates after a small disturbance. As indicated in Fig. 12, the fast
relaxation process, with relaxation time τf roughly in the range of nanoseconds and
microseconds, is due to the monomer exchange. It is characterized by a change
of the aggregation number m at almost constant number of micelles per volume. In
parallel, a slow process with relaxation time τs on the order of milliseconds or seconds
proceeds by which the final equilibirium between the micelles and the suspending
phase is reached. This slow process has been studied by time domain methods,
predominantly by pressure jump and temperature jump techniques [69]. Here we
discuss the low-frequency relaxation term of experimental spectra (Fig. 13 [70]) in
the light of the fast monomer exchange. The term at even higher frequencies is
assigned to the rotational isomerisation of the alkyl chains within the micellar cores.

For nonionic proper micelle systems with large m, the monomer concentration N1
is usually identified with the cmc. Using the scaled concentration
x = (C − cmc) /cmc (29)

Figure 13. Ultrasonic excess attenuation spectra of aqueous solutions of n-

decyltrimethylammonium bromide at 25◦ C at surfactant concentration 0.15 mol/l (•) and
0.5 mol/l (◦). The critical micelle concentration is 0.06 mol/l [70].
P
with the total amphiphile concentration C = i i Ni , the amplitude and relaxation
time of the term reflecting the fast monomer exchange are predicted as [67,68]
2 −1
π (∆V ) cmc σ 2 σ2

Af = x 1+ x (30)
κS∞ R T m m
and
kr σ2

τf−1 = 2 1+ x , (31)
σ m
respectively. In deriving Eq. (30) the same reaction volume ∆V has been assumed
for all reaction steps of the isodesmic scheme. The quantity κS∞ = %−1 c−2 (∞) is
the adiabatic compressibility extrapolated to frequencies well above the relaxation
region. The amplitude of the Teubner-Kahlweit-Aniansson-Wall model increases
monotonously with concentration to asymptotically approach
2
π (∆V ) cmc
lim Af = . (32)
C→∞ κS∞ R T
The relaxation rate depends linearly upon concentration
τf−1 = aC + b (33)
−1

with slope a = k r /(m cmc) and with b = k r σ 2 − m . As obvious from Fig. 14,
Af and τf−1 for sodium dodecylsulfate solutions display quite different concentra-
tion dependencies [71], indicating a significant effect from the ionic nature of the
amphiphile. Obviously, the discrepancy between the experimental findings and the
predictions of the original Teubner-Kahlweit-Aniansson-Wall model reflects consid-
erable effects from incomplete dissociation of the surfactant [72]. If Ji denotes the
number of undissociated monomers per aggregate of class i, the law of mass action
relates the concentration of free counterions
1/(Ji+1 −Ji )
[Ni+1 ]
[Nc ] = (34)
[Ni ] [N1 ] bi+1
Figure 14. Relaxation amplitude Af (•) and relaxation rate τf−1 (◦) of the sonic relaxation
term reflecting the fast monomer exchange in sodium dodecylsulfate solutions in water at
25◦ C [71] displayed versus concentration exceeding the cmc. Lines indicate the theoretical
relations (Eqs. (30,31)) when according to Eq. (35) the monomer concentration [N1 ] is used
instead of the cmc in the scaled concentration x (Eq. (29)).
to the concentration [N1 ] of surfactant monomers and [Ni ] of class i aggregates.

Here bi+1 is the equilibrium constant. Assuming the effective degree of dissociation
αi = 1 − Ji /i for proper micelles to be independent of i within the micelle region
(αi = α m ), an implicit relation for the monomer concentration as a function of total
surfactant concentration C follows:
1/(m(2−α m ) (1−α m )/(2−α m )
C C
[N1 ] = Nγ −1 1 + αm −1 (35)
[N1 ] [N1 ]
where √ 1/[m(2−α m )]
Nγ = 2πσ m b m . (36)
Deriving these equations m ≈ m + 1 has been tacitely assumed. Using the monomer
concentration [N1 ] from Eq. (35) instead of the cmc in the scaled concentration
parameter x (Eq. (29)) and assuming the reasonable degree of dissociation αm =
0.33 [73] the Teubner-Kahlweit-Aniansson-Wall theory nicely represents the experi-
mental sonic amplitudes and relaxation times. The monomer concentrations following
from the analysis of spectra are shown in Fig. 15 as a function of surfactant concen-
tration. Also presented in that diagram is the cmc and the [N1 ]-versus-C dependence
for nonionic surfactant systems, as simulated by α m = 1 in the above relations. With
the ionic surfactant solutions the monomer concentration after reaching the cmc de-
creases significantly whereas the [N1 ] values of the nonionic surfactant system slightly
increase with C. The tendency in the monomer concentration of ionic surfactants to
decrease above the cmc is a well-established fact [5].
Another extension of the Teubner-Kahlweit model is required to properly account
for the ultrasonic attenuation spectra of surfactant systems close to the cmc [74–
Figure 15. Monomer concentration [N1 ] of sodium dodecylsulfate solutions as resulting

from the evaluation of the ultrasonic relaxation amplitudes (Fig. 14) shown as a function of
surfactant concentration C. The dashed line shows [N1 ] on the assumption of completely
dissociated surfactant molecules (αm = 1), the dotted line indicates [N1 ] = cmc [71].
76]. As an example, spectra for aqueous solutions of n-heptylammonium chloride

(n-HepACl) at surfactant concentrations slightly above and slightly below the cmc
(≈0.45 mol/l) are displayed in Fig. 16. Amphiphiles with such short alkyl chain do
not reveal a well defined sharp critical micelle concentration. Rather they display a
transition region. Obviously, even at surfactant concentrations somewhat below the
transition region, both relaxation ranges of the proper sodium dodecylsulfate micelle
system (Fig. 13) exist also in the spectra of the short chain n-HepACl solutions
with extraordinarily high cmc (Fig. 16). Some features in the spectra of the latter,
Figure 16. Sonic excess attenuation spectra for aqueous solutions of n-heptylammonium
chloride at 25◦ C and at two concentrations: ◦, 0.4 mol/l ≈ cmc; •, 0.5 mol/l [74]. The
dashed lines show the subdivision of the former spectrum in a Hill term (H) and a Debye
term (D). Full lines are the graphs of the sum of these terms, respectively.
Figure 17. Relaxation time distribution function of the Hill relaxation term of some n-
heptylammonium chloride aqueous solutions at 25◦ C.
however, attract attention. Obviously, the low-frequency term, which within the
micelle formation/decay scheme (Fig. 12) reflects the fast monomer exchange, is
subject to a considerable distribution of relaxation times. Empirically this term can
be adequately represented by a Hill relaxation function [77–79], defined by
AH (ωτH )mH
RH (ν) = mH +nH . (37)
[1 + (ωτH )2sH ] 2sH
In this function AH is an amplitude and mH , nH , sH ∈]0, 1] are parameters con-

trolling the shape and width of the underlying relaxation time distribution function
GH (ln(τ /τH )). The principal relaxation time τH , according to [79]
τH = τmax (mH /nH )1/(2sH ) (38)

−1
is related to the frequency νmax = (2πτmax ) at which RH (ν) adopts its maximum.
At some surfactant concentrations the relaxation time distribution function, de-
fined by
Z ∞
−1
RH (ν) = AH GH (ln(τ /τH )) ωτ 1 + (ωτ )2 d ln(τ /τH ) (39)
−∞
is shown in Fig. 17 for solutions of n-HepACl in water. The function GH (ln(τ /τH ))
has been calculated by analytical continuation [80] from the Hill spectral function
(Eq. (37)) using the normalisation
Z ∞
GH (ln(τ /τH )) d ln(τ /τH ) = 0 . (40)
−∞
−1
Figure 18. Relaxation rate τmax of the Hill relaxation term in the spectra of aqueous
solutions of n-heptylammonium chloride (4 [74]) and of triethylene glycol monohexyl ether
(◦ [81]) at 25◦ C displayed versus concentration difference C − cmc. The dashed line rep-
resents the predictions from the extended version of the Teubner-Kahlweit-Aniansson-Wall
model [75].
The curves given in Fig. 17 reveal a particularly broad distribution function at surfac-
tant concentrations near the cmc, where the content of oligomeric structures is high.
Additionally, the relaxation time τH of the short chain surfactant system shows a
remarkable behaviour (Fig. 18). At variance with the predictions of the Teubner-
−1
Kahlweit-Aniansson-Wall theory (Eq. (31)), the experimental relaxation rate τmax
−1
(and thus τH ) at surfactant concentrations near the cmc first decreases with C to
increase according to Eq. (31) at higher C only. In order to take properties of short
chain surfactant systems into account, a computer simulation study of the coupled
isodesmic reaction scheme (Eq. (25)) has been performed [75] in which the size dis-
tribution of micelles was not introduced empirically but was derived from reasonable
rate constants, assumed to follow
f
ki+1 = k fm (1 − sf (i − m)) (41)
and

r 1 − ic i − ic
ki+1 = k rm (1 + sr (i − m)) + k2r 1 + exp 1 + exp .
d d
(42)
In these equations the parameters sf and sr define the slopes in the dependencies of
kif and kir upon i and k fm as well as k rm allow the forward and reverse rate constants,
respectively, to be matched at i = m. Parameter ic defines the aggregation number at
which the reverse rate constants kir change from a linear dependence upon i to a Fermi
distribution. The quantities k2r and d are additionally used to model the kir -versus-i
relation at small aggregation numbers. These quantities are thus related to the cmc
of the system and, on favourable conditions, can be obtained from experimental data.
At reasonable values of the parameters of Eqs. (41,42) a Gaussian size distribution
of micelles follows also from this procedure. According to
−1
σ 2 = (sf + sr ) (43)
the variance of the distribution is given by the slope parameters in the dependencies
of the rate constants upon the aggregate size.
The adequacy of the above relations has been demonstrated by considering results
for solutions of proper micelles [75]. As the numerical evaluation of the isodesmic
reaction scheme (Eq. (25)) avoids approximations of the analytical treatment, it is
capable of revealing some special features of short chain surfactant solutions which
remain unnoticed otherwise. For parameters modelling the n-HepACl system the size
distribution of the micellar species at some surfactant concentrations is displayed in
Fig. 19. Some characteristics of these distribution functions attract
attention. The
less pronounced relative minimum in the size distribution Ni (i) contrasts the deep
minimum presumed by the Teubner-Kahlweit-Aniansson-Wall model for the oligomer
region. Hence there exists a noticeable content of small oligomeric structures in
the short chain surfactant solutions and the separation between the slow and the
fast relaxation process
is reduced
or absent at all. At C ≈ cmc and C < cmc the
relative maximum in Ni (i) , as characteristic for the Gaussian distribution of proper
micelles, is absent. Even at surfactant concentrations distinctly smaller than the cmc,
a noticeable content of oligomeric species is formed.
The eigenrate spectrum of the isodesmic reaction scheme (Eq. (25)) near the cmc
confirms the absence of any slow relaxation process due to the absence of a pro-
nounced relative minimum in the size distribution Ni (i) . As indicated by the
ˆ ˜
Figure 19. Distribution of the equilibrium concentration Ni of aggregates from i
monomers as resulting from the extended Teubner-Kahlweit model [75]. In the numeri-
cal calculations parameters have been chosen to correspond with the n-heptylammonium
chloride/water system at surfactant concentration C.
dashed line in Fig. 18 the extended model of stepwise association predicts an increase
−1
of the relaxation rate τmax when, at C below the cmc, the surfactant concentration
decreases. An increase distinctly smaller than the one obtained from sonic attenu-
ation spectra, however, is predicted by the extended Teubner-Kahlweit model. The
theoretical relaxation-rate-versus-concentration relation also suffers from the inap-
propriate assumption of a concentration independent mean aggregation number m,
−1
leading to a wrong slope d(τmax )/dC at C > cmc. Interesting, however the numerical
evaluation of the isodesmic reaction scheme yields the simultaneous presence of two
fast relaxation terms with similar relaxation rates and relaxation amplitudes. These
terms cannot be represented by a single Debye term but result in an unsymmetric
broadening of the relaxation time spectrum as indicated by the Hill relaxation time
distribution. Furtheron the numerical simulation reveals ultrafast relaxation contri-
butions reflecting the monomer exchange of oligomeric species. This oligomer process
is assigned to the high-frequency Debye-type relaxation term in the sonic attenua-
tion spectra of short chain surfactant solutions because this term is unlikely due to
the hydrocarbon chain isomerisation in the micelle cores. Structural isomerisations
of such short chains are expected to display relaxation characteristics to the sonic
attenuation spectrum at frequencies well above measurement range.
4 Local fluctuations in concentration
4.1 Noncritical dynamics

Binary liquid mixtures may minimize their free energy by forming a microhetero-
geneous structure which fluctuates rapidly in time. The local fluctuations in the
concentration of the constituents relax by diffusion. Based on the dynamic scaling
hypothesis [82–85]
ξ2
τξ = , (44)
2D
the characteristic relaxation time τξ is assumed to be given by a characteristic length
ξ of the system and by the mutual diffusion coefficient D. In critical mixtures the
fluctuation correlation length ξ covers vast ranges of size and follows a power law [6–
11]
ξ = ξ0 −ν̃ (45)
thus tending to mask the individual properties of the system. In Eq. (45) ξ0 is an
individual amplitude, ν̃ a universal exponent and
|T − Tc |
= (46)
Tc
is a scaled (reduced) temperature. In systems displaying noncritical dynamics the

critical temperature is not reached so that the fluctuation correlation length does not
diverge.
Ultrasonic attenuation spectra due to noncritical concentration fluctuations [86–
90] extend over a broader frequency range than Debye type processes with a discrete
relaxation time (e. g. Eq. (20)). An example of a spectrum is shown in Fig. 20. Also
Figure 20. Ultrasonic excess attenuation spectrum of a mixture of water and 2-(2-
butoxyethoxy)ethanol (C4 E2 ) at 25◦ C [88]. The mole fraction of C4 E2 is x = 0.04. Dashed
and dotted lines are graphs of a Debye relaxation spectral term with discrete relaxation
time τD [34] and of a Romanov-Solov’ev term [91], respectively. The full curve represents
the unifying model of noncritical concentration fluctuations ([89], Eq. (53)).
given in that diagram is the graph of a relaxation term RRS (ν) as resulting from
the Romanov-Solov’ev theory of noncritical concentration fluctuations [91–93]. This
term also represents the experimental data only insufficiently. Several extensions
to the Romanov-Solov’ev theory have been made [87,89,94,95]. Here we sketch only
the last unifying model [89] because it combines the relevant aspects of all previous
theories.
In the unifying model changes in the local composition of the binary liquids are
assumed to occur along two possible pathways, one of which is an elementary chem-
ical reaction with discrete relaxation time τ0 and the other one a diffusion process
with mutual diffusion coefficient D. The time behaviour of the fluctuations is then
controlled by the differential equation

∂Φ(r, t) 1
= D∇2 − Φ(r, t) (47)
∂t τ0
with Φ(r, t) denoting the autocorrelation function of the order parameter, namely the
deviation of the local concentration from the mean. Spatial Fourier transformation
yields Z
Φ̂(q, t) = Φ(r, t) exp(ı rq) dr (48)
r
with wave vector q. In the q space the simpler differential equation
∂ Φ̂(q, t) 1
= − Φ̂(q, t) (49)
∂t τg
follows with
τg−1 = Dq 2 + τ0−1 . (50)
Here q = |q|. For isotropic liquids the correlations in the local fluctuations will
depend on the distance r = |r| only. Eq. (49) may thus be solved by exponentials
with decay time τg for each Fourier component. Hence
Φ̂(q, t) = fˆ(q) exp(−t/τg ) . (51)
The weight function fˆ(q) is the Fourier transformation of the correlations in space
Φ(r, 0) of the concentration fluctuations at time t = 0. The different theories of
noncritical concentration fluctuations differ from one another by the weight function.
The unifying model uses the function
−2
fˆ(q) = 1 + 0.164(qξ) + 0.25(qξ)2 , (52)
assuming the long-range correlations to follow Ornstein-Zernike behaviour, whereas

short-range correlations are considered by a nearly exponential decay at r < ξ. The
special choice of the weight function leads to a contribution from concentration fluc-
tuations to the relaxation spectral function
Z ∞
ωτg
Rum (ν) = Q fˆ(q) q 2 dq (53)
0 1 + ω 2 τg2
describing the response of the liquid to compressional waves without artifical limits
in the integration procedure. The amplitude factor Q is assumed a sum of the
Romanov-Solov’ev factor QRS [91], given by the relation
% c2 kB T V 2 v 00 h00

QRS = −Λ , (54)
8π g 002 V Cp
and the Montrose-Litovitz contribution QML [94], resulting from a shear viscosity
relaxation with identical frequency characteristics. In Eq. (54) kB is Boltzmann’s
constant and the double-primed quantities
∂ 2 G0 ∂ 2 V0 ∂ 2 H0
g 00 = 2 , v 00 = 2 , h00 = (55)
∂ x̄2 ∂ x̄2 ∂ x̄22
are the second derivatives of the Gibbs free enthalpy, the molar volume, and the
molar enthalpy, respectively, without contributions from the concentration fluctua-
tions. Parameter x̄2 denotes the equilibrium mole fraction of the dispersed phase.
For an example Fig. 21 shows the QRS -versus-x̄2 relation, as following from Eqs. (54)
and (55), along with experimental Q data. Even though it is difficult to derive reli-
able second derivative values from experimental G0 , V0 , and H0 data the agreement
between theory and experiment is satisfactory. This is a remarkable result as the
amplitude factor displays a quite unusual dependence upon x̄2 .
Using diffusion coefficients D as resulting from an analysis of experimental spectra
in terms of relaxation function Rum (ν) and taking shear viscosity ηs from measure-
ments the fluctuation correlation length ξ can be derived from the Kawasaki-Ferrell
relation [84,96]
kB T
ξ= . (56)
6πηs D
Figure 21. Amplitude factor of the relaxation spectral function Rum (ν) (Eq. (53)) for
aqueous solutions of tetra-n-propylammonium bromide at 25◦ C, displayed as a function of
equilibrium mole fraction x̄2 of salt [87,89]. The dashed line is the graph of the Romanov-
Solov’ev ampitude factor (Eqs. (54,55)).
For three series of solutes the maximum ξ values of aqueous systems are displayed in
Fig. 22 as a function of the number n of alkyl groups per molecule of solute. Within
the series of unbranched molecules the maximum correlation length ξmax increases
significantly with length of the hydrophobic group of solute. Obviously, the nature
of the hydrophilic group is of low significance for ξmax . In correspondence to the
formation of micelles, the larger the hydrophobic part of the nonaqueous constituent
Figure 22. Maximum value ξmax in the concentration dependence of a binary sys-
tem, displayed as a function of the number n of alkyl groups per organic molecule
for some aqueous solutions of urea derivatives (•), monohydric alcohols (◦), and
poly(ethylene glycol) monoalkyl ethers (4) at 25◦ C [89]. EtU, ethylurea; n-PrU, n-
propylurea; n-BuU, n-butylurea; EtOH, ethanol; n-PrOH, n-propanol; i-PrOH, 2-propanol;
C2 E1 , 2-butoxyethanol; i-C3 E1 , isopropoxyethanol; C4 E1 , 2-butoxyethanol; C4 E2 , 2-(2-
butoxyethoxy)ethanol.
the stronger the tendency to form clusters in order to avoid unfavourable interactions
with water. The effect of cluster formation is noticeably smaller for solutes with
branched hydrophobic parts. Almost no fluctuations of local concentration exist
for the tetramethylurea/water system (ξmax = 2 · 10−10 m [90]), whereas ξmax =
30 · 10−10 m for aqueous solutions of n-butylurea (Fig. 22).
4.2 Critical demixing

The anomalies in the thermodynamic and transport properties, which are induced
by long wavelength fluctuations in the order parameter, associated with the phase
transition near a critical point, have attracted much interest from both a theoretical
and an experimental point of view. Considerable attention has been directed towards
ultrasonic attenuation spectrometry as the method allows to verify or disprove the
dynamic scaling hypothesis, particularly if combined with quasielastic light scattering
and shear viscosity measurements. Various theoretical models for the description of
ultrasonic spectra of critical systems exist, the most prominent are the dynamic
scaling theory [97–100], the mode coupling theory [101–104], and the more recent
intuitive theory proceeding from a description of the bulk vicosity near the critical
point [105,106].
The dynamic scaling model predicts the critical contribution
αλc = αλ − αλb (57)
to the total attenuation per wavelength, αλ = αλ, to be given by
αλc = cA(T )F (Ω) . (58)
In this relation A is an amplitude factor, only weakly depending on frequency, and

F (Ω) is the scaling function with reduced frequency
2πν
Ω= . (59)
Γ()
The relaxation rate of order parameter fluctuations, Γ() = τξ−1 , is assumed to follow
a power law
Γ() = Γ0 −Z0 ν̃ (60)
with the universal dynamical critical exponent Z0 and the critical exponent ν̃ of the
fluctuation correlation length mentioned before.
In correspondence with an empirical form of the dynamic scaling model [99] the
scaling functions of the Bhattacharjee-Ferrell (BF), Folk-Moser (FM), and Onuki
(On) models can be favourably represented by the relation [107]
" nx #−2
Ωx1/2

Fx (Ω) = 1 + 0.414 (61)
Ω
with Ωx1/2 (x = BF, FM, On) denoting the scaled half-attenuation frequency of Fx
and nx an exponent that controls the slope Sx (Ω = Ωx1/2 ) = dFx (Ω)/d ln(Ω)|Ω1/2 of
Figure 23. Graphs of the scaling functions (Eq. (61)) of the Bhattacharjee-Ferrell (BF),
Folk-Moser (FM), and Onuki (On) theory. Arrows indicate the half-attenuation frequen-
cies [107].
the scaling function at its half-attenuation frequency. Graphs of the scaling functions
from the three theoretical models are shown in Fig. 23. The corresponding parameter
values are ΩBF FM On
1/2 = 2.1, Ω1/2 = 3.1, and Ω1/2 = 6.2, as well as nBF = nOn = 0.5 and
nFM = 0.635 [107].
Recently a variety of binary mixtures has been studied in order to find out which of
the theoretical scaling functions fits best to the experimental findings. For these in-
vestigations systems with an as simple as possible background part in the attenuation-
per-wavelength spectra have been chosen because interferences of the critical dynam-
ics with noncritical processes are largely avoided thereby [108–114]. The scaling func-
tion has been directly calculated from the experimental data using the relation [99]
F (Ω) = αλc (ν, T )/αλc (ν, Tc ) . (62)
The relaxation rate Γ, required for the determination of F (Ω), has been obtained
from dynamic light scattering experiments, yielding the mutual diffusion coefficient,
and shear viscosity measurements. Considering effects of the crossover from Ising
to mean field behaviour the shear viscosity ηs has been evaluated in terms of the
dynamic scaling theory [115], which predicts
ηs () = ηb () exp(Zη H) , (63)
with the universal critical exponent Zη of the shear viscosity (Zη = 0.065 [116,117]),
with the background viscosity

Bη
ηb () = Aη exp , (64)
T − Tη
and with the crossover function H = H(ξ, qc , qD ), depending upon the fluctuation
correlation length ξ and on two cutoff wave numbers qc and qD . The analytical form
Figure 24. Shear viscosity ηs of the nitroethane-3-methylpentane mixture of critical com-

position displayed versus temperature T [111]. Circles show previous data [121]. The full
curve is the graph of the theoretical ηs relation (Eq. (63)), the dashed line represents the
noncritical background contribution ηs (Eq. (64)).
of H is given elsewhere [115,116]. Use of the more recent H 0 crossover function [118]
does not noticeably change the data obtained from the evaluation procedure. The
individual parameters Aη , Bη , and Tη in Eq. (64) are characteristic of the system
under consideration.
The mutual diffusion coefficient
3πηs 1 + x2 −1

2 2 Zη /2 −1

D = DKF 1 + b x R ΩK (x) + q̃c − qD (65)
16ηb ξ
depends also on parameters ξ, qc , and qD . Here x = q ξ with q denoting the amount

of the wave vector selected by scattering geometry in the dynamic light scattering
measurements. Furtheron, b = 0.55, R = 1.03, q̃c−1 = qc−1 + (2qD )−1 , and
3 h 2 3 −1)
i
ΩK (x) = 1 + x + (x − x ) arctan x (66)
4 x2
is the Kawasaki function [119]. Using Eq. (45) with ν̃ = 0.63 the unknown parameters
ξ0 , qc , qD , Aη , Bη , and Tη follow from a simultaneous regression analysis of the shear
viscosity and diffusion coefficient data. An example of shear viscosity data and their
representation by Eq. (63) is presented in Fig. 24. Figure 25 shows the relaxation
rates following from the shear viscosity and dynamic light scattering results. This
diagram also indicates the adequacy of the power law (Eq. (60)). For the same
binary system the scaling function data resulting from Eq. (62) are shown in Fig. 26,
indicating that the Bhattacharjee-Ferrell scaling function represents the experimental
data within their limits of experimental errors. The same result has been found
for the other systems investigated. The parameter values for these systems vary
between ξ0 = 0.145 nm and Γ0 = 187 · 109 s−1 , n-pentanol-nitromethane [109], and
Figure 25. Relaxation rate Γ of con-

centration fluctuations versus reduced
temperature for the nitroethane-3-
methylpentane mixture of critical com-
position [111]. The line in the graph of
the power law (Eq. (60)) with universal
exponent Z0 ν̃ = 3.065 [6] and with indi-
vidual amplitude Γ0 = 125·109 s−1 [111].
ξ0 = 0.37 nm as well as Γ0 = 6.4·109 s−1 , ethanol-dodecane [113]. The inset in Fig. 26

presents the scaled half-attenuation frequency which, when treated as an unknown
parameter, follows as
2
1 −1/2
ΩBF
1/2 =Ω FBF (Ω) − 1 . (67)
0.414
The small scatter of the experimental data around the theoretically predicted value
2.1 emphasizes the appropriateness of the Bhattacharjee-Ferrell dynamic scaling
model.
Figure 26. Scaling function data according to Eq. (62): • [111], ◦ [121]. The full line is the
graph of the empirical Bhattarcharjee-Ferrell scaling function (Eq. (61) with x = BF). For
small Ω values the half-attenuation frequency data as calculated according to Eq. (67) are
displayed in the inset. The dashed line indicates the theoretically predicted ΩBF
1/2 = 2.1 [99].
Figure 27. Ultrasonic excess attenuation spectra of some Ci Ej -water mixtures: i − C4 E1 ,

isobutoxyethanol, Y = 0.33, 25◦ C; C6 E3 , triethyleneglycol monhexyl ether, Y = 0.08, 21◦ C;
C8 E4 , tetraethyleneglycol monooctyl ether, Y = 0.071, 25◦ C; C10 E4 , tetraethyleneglycol
monodecyl ether, Y = 0.02, 16◦ C; C12 E5 , pentaethyleneglycol monododecyl ether, Y =
0.015, 25◦ C. Y denotes the mass fraction of nonionic surfactant. The lines are graphs of
the spectral functions that analytically represent the spectra [16].
4.3 Concentration fluctuations and micelle formation

Systems displaying critical dynamics and, simultaneously, noncritical elementary re-
actions, such as conformational isomerisations, associations, and protolysis/hydrolysis
[122–127], as well as micelle formation/decay kinetics [15–17,81,128–131], have been
the focus of special interest recently. Most studies aimed particularly at the slow-
ing down of chemical reactions near a critical point [132,133]. Here we mention only
some results for nonionic surfactant solutions which exhibit both, a critical micelle
concentration and a critical demixing point. Such systems attract attention due to a
second critical phenomenon, besides the fluctuations in the local concentration, and
due to the presence of a second characteristic length, the diameter of micelles, in
addition to the fluctuation correlation length.
Challenging aspects for complex liquid studies offer poly(ethylene glycol) monoalkyl
ethers (CH3 (CH2 )i−1 (OCH2 CH2 )j OH; i = 1, 2, . . . ; j = 0, 1, . . . , abbreviated Ci Ej ),
as most of them form micelles and microheterogeneous phases as well. The variability
in the number of nonassociating hydrophobic (Ci ) and hydrogen bonding hydrophilic
(Ej ) group enables the kinetics of micelle formation and the critical dynamics to be
investigated for homologous series of surfactants. Figure 27 indicates the noticeable
variety in the shape of the sonic spectra of nonionic surfactant systems and also the
broad range of maximum excess attenuation values. For the system triethylene glycol
monoheptyl ether-water two ultrasonic attenuation terms contribute to the spectrum
(Fig. 28), one representing the Bhattacharjee-Ferrell critical contribution. The other
one can be well represented by the Hill relaxation function (Eq. (37)) as characteristic
for the fast monomer exchange of micellar solutions [17]. Though the experimental
Figure 28. Broadband ultrasonic attenuation spectrum of the triethyleneglycol monoheptyl

ether-water mixture of critical composition (C7 E3 -H2 O, Y = 0.1) at 15◦ C displayed in both
common formats. Full lines are graphs of the relaxation function representing the spectrum,
dashed lines represent the Bhattacharjee-Ferrell critical term. The dashed-dotted line shows
the high-frequency contribution to the α/ν 2 values and the dotted line indicates the Hill
type relaxation term reflecting the fast monomer exchange of the surfactant system.
spectra can be analyzed in terms of a linear superposition of both relaxation terms, a

coupling between the fluctuations in the local concentration and the kinetics of micelle
formation seems to exist. An indication for interferences of the critical dynamics with
the micelle kinetics is the small value ΩBF1/2 = 1 for the half-attenuation frequency in
the scaling function, which deviates considerably from the value ΩBF 1/2 = 2.1 as charac-
teristic for simpler critical mixtures (Sect. 4.2). Such interferences are also revealed by
the remarkable correlation between the maximum attenuation-per-wavelength value
max
(αλ)exc in a series of Ci Ej /H2 O mixtures and the critical micelle concentration of
that system (Fig. 29). This correlation, which exists for a broad range of cmc val-
ues, has stimulated a fluctuation controlled monomer exchange model [15]. Apart
from a critical demixing point, no noticeable fluctuations in the local concentra-
tions of micelles and monomers exist. Hence the micelle kinetics is governed by the
monomer exchange as predicted by the Teubner-Kahlweit-Aniansson-Wall model or
its extended version described before (Sect. 3.2). Approaching the critical demixing
point, diffusion controlled local fluctuations in the spatial distribution of micelles,
accompanied by fluctuations in the distribution of monomers, act a noticeable effect
on the molecular dynamics. Due to the law of mass action the monomer exchange
kinetics, via the rate equations, is largely governed by the fluctuations in the local
concentration of micelles. The coupling between concentration fluctuations and the
micelle formation/decay process suggests the linear superposition of relaxation terms
in the ultrasonic spectra as a first approximation. Strictly the theoretical model of
sonic attenuation should combine both molecular mechanisms in a comprehensive
treatment.
Figure 29. Maximum values in the excess attenuation spectra (•) and the critical con-
tribution to the spectra (◦) displayed as a function of critical micelle concentration for a
variety of Ci Ej − H2 O mixtures at 25◦ C (C7 E3 at 22.5◦ C; C10 E4 at 18◦ C [16]).
5 Conclusions
Liquids are characterized by a rich variety of rapidly fluctuating structures, including

short living dimers as well as complexes formed from micelles, being aggregates them-
selves. The diversity in the molecular dynamics resulting thereby can be favourably
studied by acoustical spectrometry. Compressional waves couple to nearly all rele-
vant molecular mechanisms, covering a broad range of frequencies and thus relaxation
times. Though naturally rather nonspecific, variations of the temperature of the liq-
uid and of the concentration and chemical composition of constituents enable definite
results on thermodynamic and tranport parameters, which are difficult to obtain oth-
erwise. Specific insights into even complex dynamics is enabled thereby, especially if
additional experimental methods are used for complementary information.
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Copyright notice:
Figures 1 and 2 reused with permission from Ref. [32], Copyright 2001 American Chemical
Society; Fig. 4 reused from Ref. [42], Copyright 1994 Elsevier; Fig. 5 reused from Ref. [44],
Copyright 2002 American Institute of Physics; Fig. 7 reused from Ref. [46], Copyright 2004
American Institute of Physics; Fig. 14 reused from Ref. [71], Copyright 2007 American
Chemical Society; Figs. 20 and 21 reused with permission from Ref. [89], Copyright 1999
American Chemical Society; Fig. 23 reused with permission from Ref. [107], Copyright 2004
EPD Sciences; Figs. 24, 25 and 26 reused with permission from Ref. [111], Copyright 2006
American Chemical Society.
Complex dynamics of nonlinear systems

Ulrich Parlitz
Drittes Physikalisches Institut, Universität Göttingen
Abstract. Different nonlinear systems are presented exhibiting various dynamical phenom-
ena, including bifurcations, chaotic dynamics, and synchronisation. Furthermore, methods
for analysing, modelling and controlling complex dynamics are discussed. All these topics
are illustrated with examples from work on nonlinear systems conducted at the DPI1 .
1 Introduction
Nonlinearity introduces a wealth of genuine dynamical phenomena, including multi-

stability, different kinds of bifurcations, chaos and synchronisation, to mention some
of the most important ones. Investigations on chaotic dynamics have shed new light
on the notions of predictability and determinism, because the deterministic dynamics
of even simple systems may be notoriously difficult to predict on short time scales and
even impossible to forecast in the long run. The reason for this behaviour is sensitive
dependence on initial conditions, where arbitrarily small perturbations of the system
grow exponentially and thus become macroscopically relevant after some finite time.
However, in spite of this extreme sensitivity chaotic systems can synchronise their
aperiodic motion and, on the other hand, there exist different ways to suppress chaos
by appropriate control methods.
Many aspects of nonlinear chaotic dynamics have been studied at the DPI1 during
the past decades. This research was initiated by Werner Lauterborn in the 1970s
and 1980s when he published his seminal work on nonlinear bubble oscillations and
chaos [1–3]. Later, many other nonlinear oscillators have been investigated in detail,
and as a representative example we shall present some typical dynamical features of
the driven Duffing oscillator in Sect. 2.1.
Another class of physical systems with very interesting nonlinear behaviour are
lasers. Semiconductor lasers, for example, exhibit very complex chaotic dynamics
when their emitted light is partly fed back by an external reflection. This phe-
nomenon will be illustrated in Sect. 2.2 and in Sect. 5 synchronisation of two optically
coupled chaotic semicondutor lasers is shown. Another type of lasers showing chaotic
dynamics above some pump power threshold are frequency-doubled solid-state lasers.
Since for many technical applications irregular intensity fluctuations are unwanted
1
DPI = Drittes Physikalisches Institut = Third Physical Institute
406 U. Parlitz
here chaos control methods are of interest. As an example, in Sect. 6.1 multiple-
delay feedback control is applied to a frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser to suppress
its chaotic fluctuations. This control method was developed at the DPI and has
some promising features for stabilising and manipulating chaotic systems including
complex spatio-temporal dynamics (Sect. 6.2). In Sect. 2.3 a combination of dynam-
ical system governed by ordinary differential equations and an automaton switching
between a finite number of states is presented. Such hybrid systems often occur in a
technical context and may also exhibit chaotic dynamics. In Sect. 3 we briefly revisit
the most important concepts for characterising chaotic dynamics: fractal dimensions
and Lyapunov exponents. To investigate experimental systems specific methods for
time series analysis are required. Following the long tradition of signal processing at
the DPI, new methods for data analysis have been devised, implemented and applied.
This topic is addressed in Sect. 4 where state space reconstruction (Sect. 4.1) and
forecasting methods (Sect. 4.2) are discussed.
2 Nonlinear systems exhibiting complex dynamics
In this section three types of dynamical systems are presented which possess different
dynamical features.
2.1 Nonlinear oscillators

A cornerstone of physics and engineering is the damped harmonic oscillator
ẍ + dẋ + ω02 x = f cos(ωt) (1)
driven by some external periodic force f cos(ωt).2 It is well known that the solution
of this ordinary differential equation (ODE)
x(t) = xhom (t) + xinhom (t) (2)
consists of a general solution xhom (t) of the homogeneous equation (f = 0) converging
to zero due to the damping and a special solution of the inhomogeneous system (1)
xinhom (t) = a cos(ωt − ϕ) (3)
with amplitude
f
a= p 2 (4)
(ω0 − ω 2 )2 + d2 ω 2
and phase
dω
ϕ = arctan 2 . (5)
ω0 − ω 2
The amplitude a of the (asymptotic) oscillation of the driven linear oscillator is
proportional to the driving force f and the shape and location of the resonance curve
a(ω) which depends on the damping d and the eigenfrequency ω0 as shown in Fig. 1.
2
By rescaling time the eigenfrequency ω0 can be eliminated (i. e., ω0 → 1) but we shall
keep it here for a more transparent interpretation of the results.
Complex dynamics of nonlinear systems 407
5
a d = 0.2
4
Figure 1. Resonance curves of the
damped and driven harmonic oscil- 3
lator Eq. (1) for high (d = 0.5) and

2
low (d = 0.2) damping with f = 1
and ω0 = 1. The maximal ampli- d = 0.5
1
tude amax occurs p at the resonance
frequency ωr = ω02 − d2 /2. 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
ω
These relations completely describe the response of a (damped) harmonic oscillator

to a sinusoidal excitation and can be extended to the case of a general periodic force
using the superposition principle. Such a comprehensive treatment is possible only,
because this system is linear. Many natural oscillators, however, are nonlinear and
the question arises: how do nonlinearities change the dynamical behaviour? With
the harmonic oscillator nonlinearity can enter in terms of a nonlinear restoring force
and/or due to a nonlinear damping mechanism where the latter may render the
oscillator a self-sustained system oscillating without any external driving.
A prototypical example of an oscillator with a nonlinear restoring force is the
Duffing oscillator
ẍ + dẋ + ω02 x + αx3 = f cos(ωt) , (6)
where the restoring force ω02 x + αx3 may be interpreted as a nonlinear approximation
of a more general nonlinear force (Taylor expansion). By rescaling time t and x both
coefficients ω02 and α can be set to one and the resulting normalised Duffing equation
reads
ẍ + dẋ + x + x3 = f cos(ωt) . (7)
The class of nonlinear oscillators with cubic restoring force is named after Georg
Duffing engineer in Berlin in the beginning of the 20th century and published in 1918
a detailed study on ‘Erzwungene Schwingungen bei veränderlicher Eigenfrequenz und
ihre technische Bedeutung’ 3 [4].
As pointed out in the title of Duffing’s book the “eigenfrequency” of nonlinear
oscillators depends in general very much on the amplitude of the oscillation and
actually provides a useful notion for relatively small amplitudes only, as we shall
show in the following. This phenomenon is illustrated in Fig. 2 where amplitude
resonance curves of the Duffing oscillator Eq. (7) are shown for d = 0.2 and three
different driving amplitudes. For weak forcing with f = 0.15 the resulting (black)
resonance curve still resembles the linear resonance curve (Fig. 1) but it is shifted
towards higher frequencies and it bends to the right. If the driving amplitude is
increased to f = 0.3 the resonance moves further to the right and the curve overhangs
3
In English: Driven oscillations with variable eigenfrequencies and their technical im-
portance.
408 U. Parlitz
2.5
Figure 2. Amplitude reso-
nance curve of the Duffing os-
cillator Eq. (7). Plotted is a = 2
max(x(t)) vs. ω for d = 0.2
and f = 0.15 (black curve),
1.5
f = 0.3 (blue curve), and f = 1
(red curve). At some critical
a
frequencies (bifurcation points) 1
the oscillations loose their sta-
bility and the system undergoes
0.5
a transient to another stable pe-
riodic solution as indicated by
the arrows. 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
ω
resulting in two branches. When slowly increasing the driving frequency ω starting
from small values the oscillation amplitude grows until the end of the upper branch
is reached. At that point the periodic oscillation looses its stability due to a saddle-
node bifurcation and the driven oscillator converges to a stable periodic oscillation
with much smaller amplitude corresponding to the lower branch. This transient is
indicated by the grey arrow pointing downward and it typically takes several periods
of the driving signal (i. e., it is not abrupt as may be suggested by the arrow). In the
opposite direction, for decreasing excitation frequencies ω the system first follows the
lower branch until this periodic oscillation becomes unstable and a transient to the
upper branch occurs. In the frequency interval between both bifurcation points two
stable periodic solutions exist for the oscillator and it depends on initial conditions
whether the system exhibits the small or the large amplitude oscillations. Each stable
periodic oscillation is associated with an attracting closed curve in state space called
an attractor and we observe here a parameter interval with coexisting attractors. If
the driving amplitude is increased to f = 1 this interval becomes larger and it is
shifted further towards high driving frequencies (red curve in Fig. 2). Additionally,
small peaks at low driving frequencies occur corresponding to nonlinear resonances.
They bend to the left and they also overhang if the driving amplitude is sufficiently
large. However, what is shown in Fig. 2 is just the tip of the iceberg and many
additional coexisting attractors undergoing different types of bifurcations occur if
the oscillator is forced into its full nonlinear regime. Before some of these features of
the Duffing oscillator will briefly be discussed we want to have a look back again at
Georg Duffing’s pioneering work. He wrote that he first hoped to solve Eq. (7) using
elliptic functions but then he realized soon that this is not possible. Then he applied
perturbation theory and tested the resulting approximate solutions with mechanical
experiments (also briefly presented in his book). His main interest was the shift of
the resonance frequency and the occurrence of coexisting stable solutions including
the resulting hysteresis phenomena (as shown in Fig. 2). Duffing’s motivation for this
study was mainly due to his interest in technical systems. In the introduction of his
book [4] he describes some observations with synchronous electrical generators each
driven by a gas turbine. If the driving turbines did not run smoothly due to extra
sparking the generators lost their synchrony and did not return to their previous
oscillations when the extra sparking of the turbines was over. 4
If the driving amplitude is further increased the cubic nonlinearity becomes more
dominant and very different types of motion occur. Figure 3 shows five examples
as time series, phase space projections and power spectra. The first time series in
Fig. 3(a) is periodic with the same period as the driving signal. Therefore, this stable
oscillation is also called a period-1 attractor. Figure 3(b) shows the corresponding
trajectory in the (x, ẋ)–plane (i. e., a projection of the attractor) where a red marker is
plotted whenever a period T = 2π ω of the drive elapsed. This results in a stroboscopic
phase portrait which is a convenient way for plotting Poincaré sections of periodi-
cally driven systems. Figure 3(c) shows a Fourier spectrum of the time series where
only odd harmonics (multiples) of the fundamental frequency occur that coincides
here with the driving frequency ν0 = ω/2π. This feature is closely connected to the
symmetry of the orbits in Fig. 3(b) that can be broken by a symmetry-breaking bifur-
cation as shown in Figs. 3(d–f). Symmetry breaking is a precursor of period-doubling
because only asymmetric orbits can undergo a period-doubling bifurcation. An ex-
ample for such a period-2 attractor is shown in Figs. 3(g–i) where now subharmonics
occur in the spectrum (Fig. 3(i)) and two markers appear on the orbit (Fig. 3(h)).
When the driving amplitude is increased furthermore a full period-doubling cascade
takes place leading to chaotic dynamics as shown in Figs. 3(j–l). The oscillation is
aperiodic (Fig. 3(j)) with a broadband spectrum (Fig. 3(l)) and a stroboscopic phase
portrait (Fig. 3(k)) that constitutes a fractal set. Finally, Figs. 3(m–o) show a period-
3 oscillation occuring for f = 56 which is an example for general period-m attractors
that can be found for any m in some specific parts of the parameter space of Duff-
ing’s equation. Again, this period-3 attractor is symmetric (with odd harmonics of
the fundamental frequency in the spectrum) and will undergo a symmetry-breaking
bifurcation before entering a period-doubling cascade to chaos.
Figure 4 shows the Poincaré section of the chaotic attractor from Fig. 3(k) in
more detail which possesses a self-similar structure as can be seen in the enlargement
Fig. 4(b).
Poincaré cross sections are also an elegant way to visualise the parameter depen-
dence of the dynamics. For this purpose a projection of the points in the Poincaré
section (i. e., z1 (n) = x(nT )) is plotted vs. a control parameter that is varied in small
steps. As initial conditions for the solutions of the equations of motions at a new
parameter value the last computed state from the previous parameter is used. In this
way, transients are kept short and one follows an attractor (and its metamorphoses
4
In Ref. [4] on page 1 and 2 Duffing wrote: “Jene synchronen Drehstrommaschinen waren
durch Gasmaschinen angetrieben. Die Frequenz der Antriebsimpulse und die sogenannte
Eigenfrequenz waren genügend auseinander, so daß nur mäßige Pendelungen auftraten, wenn
die Antriebsmaschinen im Beharrungszustande waren. Wurde dieser Beharrungszustand
jedoch nur durch einige wenige heftigere Zündungen gestört, so wurden, auch nachdem die
Verbrennungen wieder regelmäßig geworden war, die Pendelung immer noch größer und
größer, so daß die Maschinen schließlich außer Tritt kamen. Nach den Ergebnissen der
Theorie hätten, nach Eintreten der regelmäßigen Verbrennung, infolge der Dämpfung die
Schwingungen im Laufe der Zeit wieder ihre normale Größe erhalten müssen.”
410 U. Parlitz
5
(a) 4 (b) (c) 10
5
2 4
10
S(ν)
dx/dt
0 0
x
3
10
−2
−5 2
−4 10
0 10 20 30 −4 −2 0 2 4 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
t x ν/ν
5 0
(d) 5 (e) 20 (f) 10
10 4
10
dx/dt
S(ν)
0 0
x
3
10
−10
−5 2
−20 10
0 10 20 30 −5 0 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
t x ν / ν0
5
(g) (h) 20 (i) 10
5
10 4
10
dx/dt
S(ν)
0 0
x
3
10
−10
−5
2
−20 10
0 10 20 30 −5 0 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
t x ν / ν0
5
(j) (k) 20 (l) 10
5
10 4
10
dx/dt
S(ν)
0 0
x
3
10
−10
−5
−20 2
10
0 10 20 30 −5 0 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
t x ν / ν0
5
(m) (n) (o) 10
20
5
10 4
10
dx/dt
S(ν)
0 0
x
3
−10 10
−5
−20 2
10
0 10 20 30 −5 0 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
t x ν / ν0
Figure 3. Time series, (stroboscopic) phase portraits, and power spectra of the Duffing
oscillator Eq. (7) for d = 0.2, ω = 2 and (a-c) f = 10 (symmetric period-1), (d-f) f = 42
(asymmetric period-1), (g-i) f = 48 (period-2), (j-l) f = 54 (chaos), and (m-o) f = 56
(symmetric period-3). Red markers are plotted whenever a period T = 2π/ω = 1/ν0 of the
drive elapsed.
and bifurcations) in parameter space. Figure 5(a) shows such a bifurcation diagram
where the driving frequency ω is varied and in Fig. 5(b) the driving force f is used
as a control parameter.
Although providing already a very detailed view of the bifurcation structure, bifur-
cation diagrams are limited to a single parameter axis. To get an even better overview
Figure 4. Poincaré section of a chaotic attractor of Duffing’s equation (7) (d = 0.2, ω = 2,

f = 54) generated by stroboscopic sampling of z1 (n) = x(nT ) and z2 (n) = ẋ(nT ) with the
driving period T = 2π/ω. (a) Poincaré section of the full attractor (see Fig. 3k) and (b)
section (zoom in) showing the underlying self-similar fractal structure.
Figure 5. Bifurcation diagrams of the Duffing oscillator (7) with control parameter (a)
driving frequency ω (d = 0.2, f = 23) and (b) driving amplitude f (d = 0.2, ω = 2).
412 U. Parlitz
two-parameter studies are often desired and there are many bifurcation phenomena
requiring (at least) two control parameters (called codimension-two bifurcations).
Two-dimensional charts of the parameter space showing parameter combinations
where bifurcations occur are called phase diagrams. In these diagrams (codimension-
one) bifurcations are associated with curves as can be seen in Fig. 6 for the Duffing
oscillator. The damping constant d = 0.2 is kept fixed and the driving frequency ω
and the driving amplitude f are plotted along logarithmic axes, to emphasise the re-
peated structure of bifurcation curves. This superstructure of the bifurcation set [5]
is closely connected to the nonlinear resonances of the oscillator (partly visible in
Fig. 2) and the torsion of the flow along the periodic orbits [6]. In the parameter
regions coloured in orange asymmetric period-1 oscillations exist (similar to the ex-
ample shown in Fig. 3(d–f)) and in the yellow regions period-doubling cascades and
chaos occur. There is some very characteristic pattern of bifurcation curves (not
shown here) that occurs not only in all resonances of Duffing’s equation but also
with many other driven nonlinear oscillators [7,8]. Furthermore, the phase diagram
in Fig. 3 doesn’t show all bifurcations in the chosen section of the parameter space.
There are, for example, coexisting attractors in phase space which independently
undergo their own bifurcation scenarios when ω and f are varied. A complete study
and smart ways for visualising the plethora of attractors and bifurcations of Duffing’s
equation (and other nonlinear oscillators) remains a challenge.
200
100
30
20
10
1
0.33 1 2 2.4
ω
Figure 6. Phase diagram of the Duffing oscillator Eq. (7) for d = 0.2 [9].
2.2 Semiconductor lasers with external cavities

Lasers are known as prototypical system with extremely well-ordered dynamics. This
order, however, can be destroyed by nonlinearities and feedback. A typical example
for this phenomenon are semiconductor lasers with external cavities [10]. Pointing
the laser at a mirror, such that a fraction of its own light output is led back into
its internal resonator, the laser’s intensity will start to fluctuate and, depending on
a number of parameters, different interesting dynamics can occur, including high-
dimensional chaos.
These phenomena are known since 1977, when Risch and Voumand [11] were the
first to describe the so called low-frequency fluctuations (LFFs) of a semiconductor
laser. They occur for very small reflectivities and pump currents only slightly above
the threshold current. The light output of LFFs is characterised by frequent and
very sudden power drop-outs, each followed by a relatively slow recreation of the light
intensity. Modulated onto them is a fast oscillation that can usually only be seen low-
pass filtered due to the finite response time of the photo diode used to capture the
intensity and limited transfer functions of subsequent amplifiers and oscilloscopes.
The frequency of the power drop-outs is only 3–30 MHz, which is relatively slow
compared to the fast oscillations that are in the range of several GHz.
The first model describing the dynamics of semiconductor lasers with optical feed-
back was proposed by Lang and Kobayashi [12] in 1980. They extended the well-
known semiconductor rate equations by a feedback term, which leads to a system of
equations known as the Lang-Kobayashi equations (LKEs):
1
Ė0 (t) = GN n(t)E0 (t) + κE0 (t − τ ) cos[ω0 τ + φ(t) − φ(t − τ )]
2
1 E0 (t − τ )
φ̇(t) = αGN n(t) − κ sin[ω0 τ + φ(t) − φ(t − τ )] (8)
2 E0 (t)
ṅ(t) = (p − 1)Jth − γn(t) − [Γ + GN n(t)]E02 (t) ,
where κ is the differential feedback rate. The equation for the complex electric field
E(t) = E0 (t) exp(i[ω0 t+φ(t)]) has been split into two one-dimensional real equations,
and n(t) = N (t)−Nsol is the carrier number above the value Nsol of the unperturbed,
“solitary” semiconductor laser with no optical feedback. τ is the light round-trip time
in the external resonator. All other parameters are explained in Table 1. In general,
the LKEs also contain a stochastic term for describing spontaneous emission that
has been omitted here. Since Eq. (8) is a delay differential equation it describes a
dynamical system with an infinite-dimensional state space where very complex high-
dimensional chaotic dynamics may occur (and does occur!).
Using these equations, Lang and Kobayashi were able to simulate the phenomena
they discovered for small reflectivities and laser-mirror distances of 1–2 cm, such as
multistability or hysteresis.
The origin of the LFF dynamics remained unclear for many years. Fujiwara et
al. [13] suggested the LFFs to result from a decreased relaxation oscillation frequency.
Henry and Kazarinov [14] assumed a stable resonator mode out of which the laser is
randomly kicked by spontaneous emission noise, causing power drop-outs, and Hohl
414 U. Parlitz
GN 2.142 · 10−5 ns−1 differential optical gain

α 5.0 linewidth enhancement factor
γ 0.909 ns−1 carrier loss rate
Γ 0.357 ps−1 photon loss rate
Jth 1.552 · 108 ns−1 threshold current density
p 1.02 pump current density over Jth
2πc/ω0 635 nm solitary laser wavelength
Nsol 1.707 · 108 solitary laser carrier number
κ 1011 s−1 feedback rate
τ 10 ns external cavitiy round trip time
Table 1. Typical parameter values of the Lang-Kobayashi equations (8).
et al. [15] showed that characteristics and statistics of the LFFs is indeed influenced by
this noise. Mørk et al. [16] assumed the laser to become bistable due to the feedback,
such that the spontanous emission noise would cause a mode hopping between these
two states. In 1994, Sano [17] showed that the LFF dynamics could be simulated
by the deterministic LKEs (8). Those simulations also revealed the frequency of
the fast oscillations mentioned above that were eventually visualised experimentally
by Fischer et al. [18] in 1996. In 1998 Ahlers et al. [19] showed at the DPI that
chaotic LFF dynamics generated by the LKEs may possess many positive Lyapunov
exponents (hyperchaos) and can be synchronised by optical coupling (see Sect. 5.3).
On the other hand, the chaotic fluctuations disappear if additional external cavities
are used with suitably chosen lengths and resulting delay times.
LFFs were generally assumed to be a phenomenon of only low pump currents, until
in 1997 Pan et al. [20] were the first to show both experimentally and numerically
that in case of larger feedback rates they occur for currents well above the laser
threshold as well. In this regime, power drop-outs turn into power jump-ups. They
appear like inverted power drop-outs, but their modelling is more complicated [21].
and requires multiple reflections to be taken into account [22].
(a)
Figure 7. Low frequency

fluctuations of a semicon-
ductor laser with weak
(b)
external optical feedback.
Simulation with the Lang-
Kobayashi equations (8)
and the parameters given
in Table 1 [19].
2.3 Hybrid systems

The third example of a dynamical system exhibiting chaotic dynamics is a hybrid
system consisting of a set of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) coupled to an
automaton (i. e., a finite state machine). This kind of systems occurs, for example,
whenever the dynamics is governed by some switching rules. With Karsten Peters we
studied simple hybrid systems in order to understand irregular behaviour in produc-
tion systems as used in large factories [23]. Of course, such systems are perturbed by
many stochastic influences (e. g., human behaviour, accidents, supply problems, ...)
but one may ask the question whether irregular behaviour in a production line may
also originate from its internal rules and operating conditions. In other words, does
an ideal production process without any stochastic influences always operate prop-
erly with some constant or periodic output? To address this question we investigated
a simple hybrid system representing some unit in a larger production line. As illus-
trated in Fig. 8 this unit consists of a server S processing three types of workpieces
coming from previous production units P1 , P2 , and P3 . Since at a given instant of
time the server can process the input from one of the production units, only, some
switching rules are required and the outputs of the Pi have to be stored in some
buffers. Let x1 , x2 , and x3 denote the contents of the buffers belonging to P1 , P2 ,
and P3 , respectively. If each of the production units Pi provides constant output with
some rate fi the buffer contents xi will increase with ẋi = fi . On the other hand,
the buffers are emptied by the server which formally can be described by emptying
rates ei . The ODE-system describing the buffer contents is thus given by
ẋ1 = f1 − e1
ẋ2 = f2 − e2 (9)
ẋ3 = f3 − e3
where the filling rates fi and the emptying rates ei should fulfill a balancing condition
f1 + f2 + f3 = c = e1 + e2 + e3 to avoid overflow or complete emptying of buffers.
The total input rate c is constant if all rates fi are constant and without loss of
generality we shall set c = 1 in the following. As already mentioned at a given time
the server can process only input from one of the production units Pi . Therefore,
the emptying rates ei are actually functions of time and only one of them is larger
than zero corresponding to the Pi which is currently emptied by the server S. This
is the point where some switching rules have to be defined that state which Pi has
to be served (ei (t) > 0) at a given time. A possible set of rules is the following:
• If a buffer content xk reaches some maximal value b then switch server S to

that buffer to empty it (→ ek = 1).
• If the buffer that is currently processed by S is empty (xk (t) = 0) then switch
server S to the next buffer (→ ek+1 = 1) in a cyclic order.
Here we introduced the maximal buffer content b which is an important parameter

from the practical as well as the dynamical point of view. Of course, any manufacturer
will try to keep buffers small. But it turned out that the dynamics very strongly
416 U. Parlitz
P1 P2 P3 P1 P2 P3
S S
Figure 8. Tank system describing a logistic process where three production units P1 , P2 ,
and P3 deliver some inputs (e. g., workpieces) that are stored in buffers and processed by a
subsequent server S that switches between the buffers to empty them. The filling is governed
by Eqs. (9) with fi = 1/3 following the switching rule stated in the text. If the buffer size
b (indicated by the horizontal orange line) is large the resulting dynamics is periodic (left
column, b = 0.8). Too small buffers, however, lead to chaotic switching as illustrated with
the example shown in the right column for b = 0.5.
depends on b. This is illustrated in Fig. 8. In the left column a case is shown where
b = 0.8 is relatively large. The system started with a configuration shown in the top
row where the server processes the blue buffer P1 . When P1 is emptied S switches to
the yellow buffer P3 etc. following the rules stated above. The switching process is
shown row by row in the lower left diagram starting in the upper left corner. As can
be seen a periodic state is reached after some short transient visible in the first six
rows. The right column of Fig. 8 shows what happens if the buffer size is reduced to
b = 0.5. Now the server doesn’t operate periodically anymore but switches chaotically
between the buffers of the production units.
This shows that irregular dynamics can occur in (production) logistic processes
even if they are not randomly perturbed. Here, the transition to chaos consists of
interesting (non-standard) bifurcation scenarios and of course the type of dynamics
has also some influence on the throughput of the whole unit [23,24]. An example
for a hybrid (or tank) system occuring in physics is discussed in Ref. [25] where this
formalism is used to describe front dynamics in semiconductors.
3 Characterising complex dynamics
The most important quantities for characterising chaotic dynamics are attractor di-
mensions and Lyapunov exponents that we shall briefly introduce in the following.
3.1 Fractal dimensions

The (fractal) dimension of an attractor quantifies its complexity and gives a lower
bound for the number of equations or variables needed for modelling the underlying
dynamical process.
The simplest concept of a fractal dimension is the box-counting dimension (or
capacity dimension). There, the point set (attractor) to be characterised is covered
with N d-dimensional hypercubes of size ε. The smaller ε is, the more cubes are
necessary and the scaling
DB
1
N (ε) ∝ (10)
ε
of the number of cubes N (ε) with the size ε provides, in the limit of infinitesimally
boxes, the box-counting dimension
ln N (ε)
DB = lim . (11)
ε→0 ln(1/ε)
With the box-counting dimension a hypercube is counted if it already contains just

a single point of the set to be described. In general, however, also the local density
of points is of interest, given by the probability pi to find a point in cube number i.
This probability can be estimated by the relative number of points falling in box i
and depends on the size ε. For a general point set (attractor) covered with N (ε)
d-dimensional hypercubes of size ε we obtain in this way the Rényi information of
order q
N (ε)
1 X q
Iq = ln pi , (12)
1−q i=1
which is used to define the generalised (Rényi) dimension of order q
Iq
Dq = lim . (13)
ε→0 ln(1/ε)
Note that q can be any real number, i. e., Eq. (13) describes an infinite family of
dimensions. For q = 0 the Rényi information I0 equals ln N (ε) and Eq. (13) coincides
with the definition of the box-counting dimension, D0 = DB .
From the infinite family of (generalised) dimensions Dq the correlation dimension
DC introduced by Grassberger and Procaccia [26] is often used for analysing strange
(chaotic) attractors. The correlation dimension is given by the scaling
C(r) ∝ rDC (14)

418 U. Parlitz
ln C(r)
−5
Figure 9. Correlation sum Eq. (15)
vs. radius r for the Poincaré cross
−10
section Fig. 4 of the chaotic attractor
of Duffing’s equation computed using
100000 points. The slope of ≈ 1.34 −15
represented by the (black) line seg-
ment is an approximation of the cor- −20
relation dimension DC , Eq. (16).
−15 −10 −5 0
ln r
of the correlation sum

N i−1
2 XX
C(r) = H(r − kyi − yj k) (15)
(N )(N − 1) i=1 j=1
that counts the relative number of neighbouring points yi and yj closer than r (H is
the Heaviside function with H(x) = 1 for x > 0 and zero elsewhere). The correlation
dimension
ln C(r)
DC = lim (16)
r→0 ln r
describes the scaling in the limit r → 0 and equals the Rényi dimension D2 .
Since any numerical simulation or experimental measurement provides finite data
sets, only, the limit r → 0 cannot be carried out in numerical computations of DC ,
but only the corresponding scaling behaviour
ln C(r) ≈ DC ln r (17)
can be exploited to estimate DC as a slope in a log-log-diagram. This approach is

illustrated in Fig. 9 showing ln C(r) vs. ln r for the Poincaré section of the chaotic
Duffing attractor in Fig. 4. The slope in a suitable intermediate range of r gives
the fractal dimension of the Poincaré section of the chaotic Duffing attractor (here
estimated as DC ≈ 1.34).
Each point in the Poincaré cross section corresponds to a one-dimensional tra-
jectory (segment) starting at that point. Therefore, the dimension estimate in the
Poincaré section has to be increased by one to obtain the (correlation) dimension of
the full chaotic attractor (here DC ≈ 2.34).
The definition of the correlation dimension (16) is based on a given radius r and
therefore a fixed size approach. As an alternative one may also use a fixed mass
method to estimate the dimension of the attractor as was suggested by Badii and
Politi [27,28] and Grassberger [29]. In this case the k nearest neighbours of each
reference point yn and the radius rn = r(k) of this cloud of k points are determined.
For the limit k/N → 0 one obtains, for example, an approximation of the box-
counting dimension
log N
DB ≈ − 1
PN . (18)
log N n=1 rn
To investigate the scaling in the limit k/N → 0 one can decrease the number of
neighbours k or increase the number of data points N .
All methods for computing fractal dimensions from (large) data sets can be con-
siderably accelerated by using fast search algorithms [30] for the nearest neighbours
of the data points. Algorithms for these tasks and for estimating many other useful
characteristics of nonlinear systems were implemented at the DPI and are publicly
available in the MatlabT M toolbox TSTOOL5 .
More details about dimension estimation methods, their possible pitfalls, exten-
sions, and further references are given in many review articles and textbooks [31–40].
3.2 Lyapunov exponents

Lyapunov exponents describe the mean exponential increase or decrease of small
perturbations on an attractor and are invariant with respect to diffeomorphic changes
of the coordinate system. The full set of Lyapunov exponents of a d-dimensional
system constitutes the Lyapunov spectrum which is an ordered set of real numbers
{λ1 , λ2 , . . . , λd } with λi ≥ λi+1 .
When the largest Lyapunov exponent λ1 is positive, the system is said to be chaotic
and it shows sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
The meaning of the Lyapunov exponents is illustrated in Fig. 10. An infinitesimally
small ball of initial conditions forming neighbouring points of some reference state is
transformed into an ellipsoid due to the temporal evolution of the system (linearized
around the trajectory of the reference state). The principal axes of this ellipsoid grow
or shrink proportial to exp(λi t).
For an exact definition of the Lyapunov exponents and computational details see
Geist et al. [41] or Abarbanel [38].
Figure 10. Illustration of the lo-

cal temporal evolution of a ball of
neighbouring states evolving into
an ellipsoid with principle axes
whose lengths are proportional to
exp(λi t).
4 Time series analysis
In mathematical models of dynamical systems the dynamics is described in their

state space, whose (integer) dimension is given by the number of the dependent vari-
ables of the model. In experiments, however, often just one variable is measured as
a function of time, and the state space is usually not known. How, then, to arrive
at the attractor that may characterise the system? This gap between the theoreti-
cal notions and observable quantities was filled in 1980 when Packard, Crutchfield,
Farmer, and Shaw [42] published their fundamental paper “Geometry from a time
5
TSTOOL URL: //http:www.physik3.gwdg.de/tstool/
420 U. Parlitz
series” where for the first time state space reconstruction methods were applied to
scalar time series. A mathematical justification of this approach was given by Tak-
ens [43] at about the same time. He proved that it is possible to (re)construct, from
a scalar time series only, a new state space that is diffeomorphically equivalent to
the (in general unknown) original state space of the experimental system. Based
on these reconstructed states the time series can then be analysed from the point
view of (deterministic) nonlinear dynamics. It is possible to model and predict the
underlying dynamics and to characterize the dynamics in terms of dimensions and
Lyapunov exponents, for example. In the following we will address some of these
issues. For further reading we refer to other review articles [35–39] and implemen-
tations of many time series algorithms can be found in the TSTOOL box already
mentioned in Sect. 3.1.
4.1 State space reconstruction

Essentially two methods for reconstructing the state space from scalar time series are
available: delay coordinates and derivative coordinates. Derivative coordinates were
used by Packard et al. [42] and consist of higher-order derivatives of the measured
time series. Since derivatives are susceptible to noise, derivative coordinates usually
are not very useful for experimental data. Therefore, we will discuss the method of
delay coordinates only.
Let M be a smooth (C 2 ) m–dimensional manifold in the state space in which
the dynamics of interest takes place and let φt : M → M be the corresponding flow
describing the temporal evolution of states in M . Suppose that we can measure some
scalar quantity s(t) = h(x(t)) that is given by the measurement function h : M → IR,
where x(t) = φt (x(0)). Then one may construct a delay coordinates map
F : M → IRd
x 7→ y = F (x) = (s(t), s(t − tl ), ..., s(t − (d − 1)tl )
that maps a state x from the original state space M to a point y in a reconstructed
state space IRd , where d is the embedding dimension and tl gives the delay time (or
lag) used. Figure 11 shows a visualisation of this construction. Takens [43] proved
that for d ≥ 2m + 1 it is a generic property of F to be an embedding of M in
IRd , i. e., F : M → F (M ) ⊂ IRd is a (C 2 –) diffeomorphism. Generic means that
the subset of pairs (h, tl ) which yield an embedding is an open and dense subset
in the set of all pairs (h, tl ). This theorem was generalised by Sauer, Yorke and
Casdagli [44,45] who replaced the condition d ≥ 2m + 1 by d > 2d0 (A) where d0 (A)
denotes the capacity (or: box–counting) dimension of the attractor A ⊂ M . This is
a great progress for experimental systems that possess a low–dimensional attractor
(e. g., d0 (A) < 5) in a very high–dimensional space (e.g., m = 100). In this case,
the theorem of Takens guarantees only for very large embedding dimensions d (e. g.,
d ≥ 201) the existence of a diffeomorphic equivalence, whereas with the condition of
Sauer et al. a much smaller d will suffice (e. g., d > 10). Furthermore, Sauer et al.
showed that for dimension estimation an embedding dimension d > d0 (A) suffices. In
this case the delay coordinates map F is, in general, not one-to-one, but the points
where trajectories intersect are negligible for dimension calculations. More details
attractor in the
unknown reconstruction
state space M of the attractor in IRd
F
flow φt
y
x
h delay coordinates
measurement
h: M IR y(t) = (s(t), s(t -τ), ... , s(t -(d-1) τ))
s
observable s=h(x)
t
d reconstruction dimension
τ delay time
measured time series
Figure 11. Delay reconstruction of states from scalar time series.
about the reconstruction of states, in particular in the presence of noise, may be

found in Refs. [46,47].
If the data are measured with a high sampling rate Broomhead-King-coordinates [48,
49] may be advantageous. With this method a very high-dimensional reconstruction
is used and then a new coordinate system is introduced where the origin is shifted
to the center of mass of the reconstructed states and the axes are given by the
(dominant) principal components of the distribution of points (states). This new
coordinate system is based on a Karhunen-Loève transformation 6 that may be com-
puted by a singular-value decomposition. A discussion of the advantages (e. g., noise
reduction) and disadvantages of this “post-processing” of the reconstructed states
may, for example, be found in Ref. [50].
For time series that consist of a sequence of sharp spikes (e. g. from firing neurons)
delay embedding may lead to very inhomogeneous sets of points in the reconstructed
state space that are difficult to analyse. As an alternative one may use in this
case the time intervals between the spikes as components for (re-)constructed state
vectors [51–53].
4.2 Forecasting and Modelling

After successful state space reconstruction one can approximate the dynamics in re-
construction space to forecast or control the underlying dynamical process. Very
simple but efficient algorithms for nonlinear prediction are nearest neighbours meth-
ods (also called local models). Let’s assume that we want to forecast the future
evolution of a given (reconstructed) state for some time horizon T . Available (i. e.,
6
Also called Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) or Principle Component Analysis
(PCA).
422 U. Parlitz
current state future state
flow
similar states in the past

whose temporal evolution
is known
Figure 12. Local modelling using nearest neighbours in (reconstructed) state space.
known) are some neighbouring (reconstructed) states of this reference state that oc-
curred (in the given time series) in the past such that their evolution over a period of
time T is already known (as illustrated in Fig. 12). If the dynamical flow in (recon-
structed) state space is continuous then the future values of the neighbouring states
provide good approximations of the future evolution of the reference state. This is
the main idea of the local approach and there are several options for further improv-
ing its performance [54]. Local modelling can also be applied to complex extendend
system if a suitable state space reconstruction method is used [55].
An alternative to local modelling are global models, for example given as a super-
position of nonlinear basis functions. Such models have been employed to describe
not only the dynamics of a given system but also its parameter dependence [56]. If
models with good generalisation capabilities are required (i. e., models with good
performance on data not seen during the learning process) it is often advantageous
to use not a single type of model but an ensemble of different models. Averaging
their individual forecasts provides in most cases better results (on average) than any
single model [56,57]. A MatlabT M toolbox ENTOOL for such ensemble modelling
was developed by former DPI students Christian Merkwirth and Jörg Wichard.7
5 Synchronisation of chaotic dynamics
Synchronisation of periodic signals is a well-known phenomenon in physics, engi-

neering and many other scientific disciplines. It was first investigated in 1665 by
Christiaan Huygens who observed that two pendulum clocks hanging at the same
beam of his room oscillated in exact synchrony [58,59]. Huygens made experiments
with his clocks and found that the synchronisation originates from invisible vibra-
tions of the beam enabling some interaction between both oscillators. He reported
his findings on the “sympathy of two clocks” (as he called it) at the Royal Society
of London but it took more than 200 years before research on synchronisation was
continued. J. W. Strutt (Lord Rayleigh) described in the middle of the 19th century
that two (similar) organ pipes sound unisono if placed close together so that they
can interact acoustically [60].
7
It is available at http://zti.if.uj.edu.pl/~merkwirth/entool.htm.
U(∆ Φ) ε
(a) ∆Φ (b) ∆ω
Figure 13. (a) Potential U (∆φ) = −∆ω∆φ − ε cos(∆φ) of the Adler Eq. (19) for weak
(|ε| < |∆ω|, blue curve) and strong coupling (|ε| > |∆ω|, red curve), where ∆φ(t) converges
to local minima. (b) Stability region (Arnol’d tongue, shaded) where ∆φ(t) converges to
some fixed value and both oscillators synchronise.
5.1 Synchronisation of periodic oscillations
Modern research on synchronisation began in the 1920s and again, it were technical
systems (vacuum tube oscillators) where synchronisation phenomena were observed
and investigated in detail by E. V. Appleton [61] and B. van der Pol [62] (based on
previous work and a patent of W. H. Eccles and J. H.Vincent) [58]. R. Adler [63]
showed in 1945 for a general pair of weakly coupled periodic oscillators that their
phase difference ∆φ = φ1 − φ2 is governed by a differential equation
d∆φ
= ∆ω − ε sin ∆ϕ , (19)
dt
where ∆ω = ω1 − ω2 denotes the (small) frequency mismatch between the free-

running oscillators (with individual frequencies ω1 and ω2 ) and ε is the (small) cou-
pling strength. Stability analysis shows that ∆φ grows unbounded if the coupling is
weak (|ε| < |∆ω|) but converges to a fixed value if the coupling exceeds some thresh-
old (|ε| > |∆ω|). This dynamical behaviour can also be visualised as motion of a
particle in a potential U (∆φ) = −∆ω∆φ − ε cos(∆φ) and results in a wedge-shaped
stability region (Arnol’d tongue) in the (∆ω, ε)–parameter space where synchroni-
sation (i. e., entrainment) occurs (see Fig. 13). The same synchronisation analysis
holds for periodically driven systems.
5.2 Phase synchronisation of chaotic oscillations
In Adler’s equation both oscillators are described by their phases, an approximation

that is valid for weakly coupled periodic systems [58]. However, synchronisation
phenomena are not restricted to this class of dynamical systems but occur also for
coupled or driven chaotic oscillators [64–68].
As an example we investigated with Lutz Junge an analog circuit implementa-
424 U. Parlitz
tion [69] of two uni-directionally coupled Rössler systems (20) and (21)
αẋ1 = 2 + x1 (x2 − 4)
αẋ2 = −x1 − ω1 x3 (20)
αẋ3 = ω1 x2 + 0.412x3
αẏ1 = 2 + y1 (y2 − 4)
αẏ2 = −y1 − ω2 y3 (21)
αẏ3 = ω2 y2 + 0.412y3 + c(x3 − y3 ).
Both Rössler systems exhibit chaotic oscillations when uncoupled (c = 0), but with
different mean frequencies given by the parameters ω1 = 1 and ω2 = 1.1. The
parameter α = 0.013 is a (time) scaling factor due to the hardware implementation.
In order to obtain a description in terms of phase variables, attractors have been
reconstructed from time series (16 bit resolution, 1 kHz sampling frequency) of the
x2 and the y2 variable using the method of delays (see Sect. 4.1) and are shown for
c = 0 in Fig. 14. From these reconstructions phases (angles) φ1 (t) and φ2 (t) and
mean rotation frequencies
φi (t)
Ωi = lim (22)
t→∞ t
were computed using polar coordinates centered in the ‘hole’ of each reconstructed
attractor. If both Rössler systems are uncoupled their mean rotation frequencies
Ω1 and Ω2 are different due to the different parameters ω1 = 1 and ω2 = 1.1 in
Eqs. (20) and (21). This difference still exists for sufficiently small values of the
coupling parameter c as can be seen in Fig. 15 where the mean rotation frequencies
Ω1 (dashed) and Ω2 (solid) are plotted vs. c. At c ≈ 0.18 the response system
undergoes a transition to a new phase synchronised state where the mean rotation
frequencies of the drive (20) and the response system (21) coincide.
(a) (b)
Figure 14. Delay reconstruction of the attractors of the drive (a) and the response system
(b) given by Eqs.(20) and (21), respectively. Both time series were generated experimentally
using an analog computer. The mean rotation frequencies are Ω1 = 11.82 Hz (a) and
Ω2 = 13.62 Hz (b) [69].
Figure 15. Mean rotation fre-

quencies Ω1 (dashed) and Ω2 (solid)
vs. the coupling parameter c. For
c > 0.18 phase synchronisation oc-
curs and both rotation frequencies
coincide [69].
Figure 16 shows the phase difference ∆φ(t) = φ1 (t)−φ2 (t) as a function of time for
different values of the coupling constant c. For small coupling (c = 0.1) ∆φ increases
unbounded almost linearly in time, similar to the periodic case described by Adler’s
equation (19). If the coupling is increased above the critical value of c ≈ 0.18 chaotic
phase synchronisation occurs and ∆φ undergoes a bounded chaotic oscillation.
This kind of phase synchronisation of chaotic oscillators [70] occurs also for large
networks of coupled oscillators and may be viewed as a partial synchronisation (or
coherence) because the amplitudes of the individual oscillators remain essentially
uncorrelated. To synchronise their temporal evolution, too, stronger coupling is
required and an (almost) perfect coincidence of all state variables of the coupled
systems can, of course, be expected only if the systems are (almost) identical.
This kind of synchrony is called identical synchronisation and can be achieved by
unidirectional coupling if some appropriate coupling scheme is used [66,67]. Further-
more, the driving chaotic system can by modulated by an external signal (a ‘mes-
sage’) and synchronisation of the response system provides all information required to
extract this signal from the (transmitted) coupling signal [67,71]. Whether (synchro-
nising) chaotic systems are useful potential building blocks for secure communication
systems is controversially discussed, because there are also powerful techniques from
nonlinear time series analysis to attack such an encryption. If, for example, some
part of the message input signal (plaintext) and the corresponding coupling signal
(ciphertext) are known one may ‘learn’ the underlying relation induced by the (deter-
ministic!) chaotic dynamics. An example for such a ‘known plaintext attack’ using
cluster weighted modelling may be found in Ref. [54].
Figure 16. Phase difference ∆φ =

φ1 − φ2 vs. time t for two repre-
sentative cases: c = 0.1, ∆φ grows
linearly, no phase synchronisation;
c = 0.2, ∆φ is bounded, phase syn-
chronisation [69].
426 U. Parlitz
M BS1
LD1 APD1
OD
LD2 APD2
BS2
Figure 17. Experimental synchronisation of chaotic intensity fluctuations of two uni-

directionally coupled semiconductor lasers. The lower trace (red) shows the irregular power
drop outs of the drive laser and the upper trace (blue) the emitted light of the response
laser [73].
5.3 Coupled semiconductor lasers with external cavities
As an example for (almost) identical synchronisation we show here two optically

coupled semiconductor lasers. Each laser possesses an external resonator and the
coupling is unidirectional due to an optical diode (Faraday isolator). Figure 17 show
intensities of both lasers fluctuating in synchrony [19,72,73], a phenomenon we studied
at the DPI with Volker Ahlers and Immo Wedekind.
5.4 Generalised synchronisation and parameter estimation
If the coupled systems are different from each other more sophisticated types of
(generalised) synchronisation of chaotic dynamics may occur where asymptotically
for t → ∞ a function H exists that maps states of the driving system to those of the
driven system [68,74–77].
An application of synchronisation of uni-directionally coupled systems, where gen-
eralised synchronisation plays an important role, is model validation and parameter
estimation. Here, a measured time series drives a computer model and if the model is
sufficiently accurate and all its parameters possess the right values one may achieve
synchronisation between the computer model and the data. In this way, it is possible
to recover those physical variables that have not been measured, as well as unknown
parameters of the system. This is done by changing the parameters of the model
until the (average) synchronisation error is minimized where generalised synchroni-
sation is required to obtain a well defined (and smooth) error landscape. A practical
example for this approach may be found in Ref. [78], where the parameters of a
chaotic electronic circuit have been recovered, and improved methods are presented
in Ref. [79].
6 Chaos Control
Since the end of the 1980 many chaos control methods have been suggested, studied,
and applied [80–83] 8 . One of the most successful methods is time Delayed Feedback
Control introduced by Pyragas [85] to stabilise unstable periodic orbits or fixed points
embedded in a given chaotic attractor. For a general system
ẋ = f (x, u) (23)
with state vector x the control signal
u(t) = k {g[x(t − τ )] − g[x(t)]} (24)
consists of the (amplified) difference between some observable g[x(t)] and its time
delayed value g[x(t−τ )]. The parameter k is the gain of the feedback loop, g denotes
a (suitable) measurement function and τ is the delay time, typically chosen to equal
the period of the unstable periodic orbit (UPO) to be stabilised. In this case, the
control signal vanishes on the periodic orbit, i. e. the UPO is not distorted by the
control signal but only its stability properties are changed. Therefore, this kind of
stabilisation is a noninvasive control method.
Delayed Feedback Control (DFC) is also called Time Delay Autosynchronisation
(TDAS) and proved very useful for stabilising UPOs. However, it is less efficient for
stabilising steady states (fixed points) because the control signal vanishes not only
at the desired fixed point but for any τ -periodic solution. To impose a constraint
that is fulfilled for constant solutions only, a second feedback term is necessary with
a different delay time τ̃ resulting in a control signal
u(t) = k {g[x(t − τ )] − g[x(t)]} + k̃ {g[x(t − τ̃ )] − g[x(t)]} . (25)
If the ratio of delays τ /τ̃ is irrational, then there exists no periodic orbit on which the
control signal vanishes. Only for fixed points x0 (with g[x] = const.) the differences in
Eq. (25) vanish and the control signal equals zero, resulting in a noninvasive control.
In general, more than two delay lines may be used and the gain factors of the delayed
and the not delayed signals may be different. The control signal of such a Multiple
Delay Feedback Control (MDFC) [86–89] is written as
M
X
u(t) = k0 + kma gm [x(t − τm )] − kmb gm [x(t)] (26)
m=1
with M different delay times τm and observables gm . For asymmetrical gains (kma 6=
kmb ) this control signal provides in general an invasive control scheme but for steady
state stabilisation the constant gain k0 can be chosen in a way such that the control
signal vanishes at the fixed point [89].
Multiple delay feedback control was introduced in collaboration with Alexander
Ahlborn and turned out to be suffessful for controlling many dynamical systems [88]
8
A general overview of control methods can be found in D. Guicking’s article entitled
‘Active control of sound and vibration’ in this book [84]
428 U. Parlitz
with a clear tendency that control becomes the more effective the more different de-
lay times are used. In the following two examples of successful application of MDFC
are presented: stabilisation of a chaotic frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser and ma-
nipulation of spatio-temporal dynamics of a complex Ginzburg-Landau equation.
6.1 Stabilisation of a frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser

Multiple delay feedback control has been applied very successfully [87,90] to suppress
chaotic intensity fluctuations of a compact frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser which
are notoriously difficult to avoid (green problem [91,92]). Figure 18(a) shows the
experimental set-up where the laser’s pump current provided by a current source is
modulated by the feedback signal via a bias-T. The laser emits infrared radiation of
wavelength 1064 nm as well as frequency-doubled green laser light with a wavelength
of 532 nm. Both light emissions are separated from each other by a frequency selec-
tive beam splitter. Input signals of the control loop are either the two ac coupled
orthogonally polarised infrared intensities I˜x and I˜y or the ac component of the green
intensity G̃. Using the infrared signals the pump current modulation for MDFC may
be written as
u(t) = ax I˜x (t − τx ) − bx I˜x (t) + ay I˜y (t − τy ) − by I˜y (t) (27)
and with the green laser light intensity
u(t) = ax G̃(t − τx ) − bx G̃(t) + ay G̃(t − τy ) − by G̃(t) . (28)
In both cases, the delay times τx and τy are typically in the range of τx ≈ 0.6 µs and
τy ≈ 2.8 µs. All control parameters ax , bx , ay , by , τx , τy are chosen experimentally
to achieve fixed point stabilisation. Fig. 18(b) shows a successful laser stabilisation
using MDFC. Before the control signal is switched on at t = 0 s intensity fluctuations
are visible which are then damped out by the feedback until the noise level is reached.
In this laser experiment three to four lasing modes were active. This case was also
simulated [90] with an extended (multi mode) laser model describing an inhomoge-
nous end-pumped YAG crystal.
(a) (b)
current
source 200
filter 100
1064 nm
U [mV]
bias laser 0
−100
532 nm 1064 nm −200
feedback −500 0 500

controller t [µs]
Figure 18. Suppression of chaotic intensity fluctuations of a frequency doubled Nd:YAG

laser using MDFC as defined in Eq. (27). (a) Experimental setup. (b) Time series showing
the orthogonally polarised ac coupled infrared signals I˜x (upper trace) and I˜y (lower trace).
After activation of feedback control at t = 0 the chaotic fluctuations are suppressed.
Stabilisation of the Nd:YAG laser succeeded also with Notch Filter Feedback con-
trol [93] providing some easily implementable approximation of MDFC.
6.2 Controlling spatio-temporal chaos

Delayed feedback can also be used to locally stabilise and manipulate complex spatio-
temporal dynamics [94]. To illustrate this approach we use the two-dimensional com-
plex Ginzburg-Landau equation (GLE)
∂t f = (1 + ia)∇2 f + f − (1 + ib)f |f |2 + u (29)
with an external control signal u(x, t). ∂t and ∇ denote the temporal and the spatial
derivative, respectively. The GLE (29) is a prototypical equation for spatio-temporal
systems close to a supercritical Hopf-bifurcation. It is solved here numerically for
periodic boundary conditions with a spectral code based on a Runge-Kutta scheme
of 4th order combined with a spectral method in space with a spatial grid of 90 × 90
elements (∆x = ∆y = 1).
The control signal is applied at a few control cells Ci , only, simulating experimental
sensors and actuators. In general, the control signal ui which is applied at cell Ci
M
X
ui (t) = kima sij (t − τim ) − kimb sij (t) (30)
m=1
is given by delayed and non-delayed input signals sij measured at other cells Cij
where a measured signal Z
sk (t) = f (z, t) dz (31)
Ck
is the averaged value of f at control cell Ck .

Again, the performance of the control scheme depends crucially on the gains
kima , kimb and delay times τim that may vary from cell to cell (as indicated by
the multiple index).
Figure 19 shows two examples where different coupling schemes (Figs. 19(b) and
19(d)) are used to stabilise plane waves (Fig. 19(a)) and to trap a spiral wave
(Fig. 19(c)).
7 Conclusion
This article is an attempt to give a tutorial overview of research in nonlinear dynamics

at the DPI. Of course, it is incomplete but we hope it motivates the reader to learn
more about this exciting interdisciplinary field that is heading now towards even more
complex systems like large networks of coupled oscillators or swarms of interacting
agents. So, stay tuned .... at DPI.
Acknowledgements. The author thanks Werner Lauterborn, Thomas Kurz, Robert Met-
tin and all other coworkers, students and staff at the DPI for excellent collaboration and
support.
430 U. Parlitz
(a) 40 (b) 3 2 1
20
τ1, k1a
PSfrag repla ements k1b , k2b τ2, k2a
0 k3b − τ3 , k3a
y
τ1, k1a − k1b , k2b

−20 τ2, k2a k3b
τ3, k3a
−40
−40 −20 0 20 40
x 1 2 3
PSfrag repla ements
(c) 40 (d) k1b k2b k3b
20
τ1 τ2 τ3
0 k1a − k2a − k3a −
y
−20 − τ1 − τ2 − τ3
k1a k2a k3a
−40
−40 −20 0 20 40 k1b k2b k3b
x
Figure 19. Phase (colour coded) of the complex solution f of the controlled GLE (29)
with parameters (a, b) = (−1.45, 0.34). White rectangles denote control cells where signals
are measured and control is applied. In the region between the control cells chaotic spiral
waves are turned into (a) slanted traveling waves if the control scheme (b) is applied with
parameters τ1 = 31, τ2 = 59, τ3 = 84, k1a = 0.22, k1b = 0.3, k2a = 0.2, k2b = 0.5, k3a = 0.3,
and k3b = 0. Using control scheme (d) with k1a = 0.22, k2a = 0.1, k3a = 0.35, k1b = 0.3,
k2b = 0.5, k3b = 0, τ1 = 41, τ2 = 27, and τ3 = 49 individual spiral waves can be trapped (c).
From Ref. [94].
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Copyright notice:
Figure 7 reused from Ref. [19], Copyright 1998, American Physical Society; Figs. 14, 15, and
16 reused from Ref. [69], Copyright 1996, American Physical Society; Fig. 19 reused from
Ref. [94], Copyright 2007, American Physical Society; Fig. 6 reused from Ref. [9], Copyright
1993, World Scientfic Publishing Company.
DPI60plus – a future with biophysics

S. Lakämper and C. F. Schmidt
Abstract. In this review we first give a short introduction into the techniques currently in
use and development to establish biophysics as a field of research at the DPI. On this basis,
we then continue to sketch recent research highlights, covering the growing group’s entire
scientific range. Examples are presented to illustrate the intriguing physical complexity of
biological matter and the wealth of physical approaches to study it.
The research focus of the Drittes Physikalisches Institut is changing with a change
of guards in 2006. The central activities will be in the area of biophysics and physics of
complex systems. Biophysics is an interdisciplinary and rather broad field of research,
with strong ties to condensed matter physics, statistical physics and various kinds of
technical branches of physics. Here we want to highlight recent advances in a variety
of projects in the biophysics group. We want to show how approaches and techniques
from physics can help to understand very diverse systems from single molecules to
complex polymer-networks in soft condensed matter and artificial cell-systems, as
well as real cells and tissues. This overview is not intended to present a complete
review of the field, but rather to provide a snapshot of current activities.
Experimental research hinges on technologies, and to be on the cutting edge of-
ten requires the development of new approaches that can open new fields of inquiry.
We use and further develop a variety of approaches, grouped around so called sin-
gle molecule techniques such as Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), single-molecule
fluorescence microscopy, optical trapping techniques and combinations thereof. The
following sections give an introduction to these methods before we touch on current
research projects.
1 Introduction to technologies
1.1 Atomic force microscopy

AFM – developed in the 1980s by Binnig and Rohrer as well as Quate and Hansma
– initially as an expansion of Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) – has evolved
into an important research tool, particularly in biophysics. AFM probes surfaces
by mechanical scanning with a nanometre-sized sharp tip mounted to a pliant can-
tilever. The deflection of a laser beam reports the force exerted on the tip, which
is converted to a topographic image of the surface after 2D-scanning the object of
436 S. Lakämper and C. F. Schmidt
interest. In contrast to conventional microscopy, the AFM reports the response of the
imaged objects to the force exerted by the tip which can give more than just struc-
tural information about the sample. While generally rather slow compared to, e. g.,
video microscopy, AFM provides nanometre or better resolution and therefore can
resolve details of bio-macromolecules that are otherwise only accessible by electron
microscopy or X-ray crystallography.
The AFM furthermore allows one to measure forces with piconewton resolution.
This capability can be used to mechanically probe single molecules, but also biopoly-
mers, such as DNA or protein chains, and determine rigidity, rupture forces or unfold-
ing forces. AFM-imaging of biomolecules is generally still a slow technique, requiring
10 s or more of seconds per frame. We are especially interested in new developments
aiming for imaging at video rates in order to capitalize on the capability of AFM to
monitor structure, mechanics and dynamics at the same time in physiological condi-
tions. AFM can also be combined with fluorescence microscopy which adds specific
recognition.
1.2 Fluorescence microscopy
Light microscopy and especially fluorescence microscopy has experienced a renais-

sance with the advent of laser illumination and highly photo-stable chemical and bi-
ological fluorophores. We are especially focussing on the imaging of single molecules.
The development of specific labelling strategies and of highly sensitive detection
methods and cameras have made the real-time observation of single molecules – in
vitro – or even in living organisms – in vivo – possible.
To be able to detect single molecules, the background fluorescence needs to be
sufficiently low. Two approaches are used in the lab: using total internal reflection
of a laser-beam on the glass–water interface of the sample chamber, the (evanes-
cent wave) illumination-depth within the sample is reduced to 100–200 nm. This
drastically reduces the background fluorescence, as the typically tens of µm-thick
samples are not completely illuminated. The other approach is to use wide-field il-
lumination and strongly reduce the concentration of active fluorescent proteins. The
latter approach allows better control over illumination intensities and the bleaching
processes. Furthermore, we are currently developing multi-colour single molecule flu-
orescence setups to use Förster-Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) between pairs
of fluorophores. Since the energy transfer is strongly dependent on distance, it can
be used to monitor domain and/or sub-unit interactions of proteins (molecular mo-
tors/chaperonins) on the nanometre scale.
Diffraction-limited imaging of single fluorophores results in diffraction patterns
of size ∼ λ/2 which limits the spatial resolution in densely labeled samples. An
individual fluorophore can, however, be localized by fitting the diffraction pattern of
a point source with accuracies better than 2 nm, which provides valuable information
about the dynamics of molecular machines. The accuracy of position detection and
relative shifts can be combined with or complemented by the sub-nm resolution of
optical trapping techniques.
DPI60plus – a future with biophysics 437
1.3 Optical trapping
Optical trapping exploits the transfer of momentum due to scattering or refraction

of photons by refractile objects. The forces on a small particle of higher index of
refraction than its surroundings (for example a latex or glass bead in water) can be
made to trap the particle near the focus of the laser beam. Several aspects make
such an optical trap (or “tweezers”) particularly interesting for the study of single
biomolecules: 1.) the force-range accessible with optical traps is – dependent on laser
power – about 0–250 pN which well matches the forces generated by individual motor
proteins and thus fills the gap between load-free conditions in fluorescence experi-
ments and the minimal forces resolvable by AFM (> 50 pN); 2.) the Brownian motion
of the bead in the trapping potential is well measurable and can thus be used to re-
port binding and unbinding of individual molecules to their substrate. Binding means
additional spatial confinement or an increase in total system stiffness which results
in a decrease of displacement variance. Such measurements can be performed with a
time resolution of 1 ms which is sufficiently high for the study of many conformational
changes in proteins, for example motor proteins. 3.) The spatial resolution in optical
trapping set-ups using interferometric detection is equally well suited for conforma-
tional changes of many biomolecules, namely in the nanometre range. Acusto-optical
deflectors make it possible to rapidly steer the trap, either to create a time-dependent
force on molecules or to switch between multiple quasi-simultaneous trap positions.
1.4 Microrheology
Currently, optical traps are, on the one hand, used in the lab to measure the forces
and the steps molecular motors produce when they move along cytoskeletal filaments.
Optical trapping and fast and accurate position detection are, on the other hand, also
used for “microrheology”, i. e. to probe the dynamic viscoelastic properties of soft
systems such as colloidal suspensions or polymer networks on mesoscopic scales. Soft
materials are important in technology. Examples are plastics, synthetic polymers,
polymer solutions, colloids and gels. Most biomaterials also classify as soft materials,
such as cytoskeletal protein polymers, polysaccharides, lipid membranes or DNA
solutions. Many of the varied and intriguing properties of soft materials stem from
their complex structures and dynamics with multiple characteristic length and time
scales. One of the characteristic and frequently studied material properties of such
systems is their shear modulus. In contrast to ordinary solids, the shear modulus
of polymeric materials can exhibit significant time or frequency dependence in the
range of milliseconds to seconds or even minutes. In fact, such materials are typically
viscoelastic, exhibiting both a viscous and an elastic response.
Rheology, which is the experimental and theoretical study of viscoelasticity in such
systems, is of both fundamental and immense practical significance. Bulk viscoelastic-
ity is usually measured with mechanical rheometers that probe macroscopic milliliter
samples at frequencies up to tens of Hertz. Recently, a number of techniques have
been developed to probe the material properties of systems ranging from polymer
solutions to the interior of living cells on microscopic scales. These techniques have
come to be called microrheology, as they can be used to locally measure viscoelastic
parameters. There have been several motivations for such developments. In many
cases, and especially in biological systems, samples only come in small sizes. Another
strong motivation for biological applications has been the prospect of being able to
study inhomogeneities, for instance inside of cells. Furthermore, such techniques have
provided the possibility to study viscoelasticity at frequencies far above 1 kHz. Fi-
nally, the ability to study materials such as polymer solutions with probes spanning
some of the characteristic microscopic length scales, e. g. approaching the inter-chain
separation or mesh size of gels, has led to new insights into the microscopic basis of
viscoelasticity in these systems.
We use these techniques to measure the frequency dependence of the shear elastic
modulus of both technical polymers and colloids, biological filamentous networks
and even whole cells. We use several different experimental approaches: in passive
microrheology we merely monitor either the fluctuations of individual probe particles
(one-particle passive microrheology) or the correlated fluctuations of pairs of particles
(two-particle passive microrheology). In active microrheology we exert oscillating
forces on one bead with the help of the trap and AODs and monitor the response
of a second particle. Cytoskeletal networks, for example entangled or cross-linked
actin networks, have been a focus of interest. In vitro reconstituted networks are
a step towards the highly complex and multi-component cytoskeleton of cells. An
important step in the direction of the real systems is the addition of molecular motors
to such model networks. Myosin motors can interact cyclically with the actin filaments
under ATP consumption and create tension in the network. In this situation the
system is out of equilibrium. The understanding of such non-equilibrium systems is
of value to the understanding of cellular systems which are almost by definition out
of equilibrium. A next step in complexity is to couple such non-equilibrium networks
to uni-lamellar lipid vesicles. Such systems are also a step on the way to an artificial
cell. In complementary approaches we also optically manipulate particles attached to
or introduced into living cells.
2 Biomolecular shell mechanics probed with atomic force microscopy
2.1 Microtubules
Microtubules, one of the three major types of cytoskeletal protein-filaments are po-
larized polymers of tubulin. The 25 nm-diameter hollow tubules not only provide a
mechanical scaffolding for eukaryotic cells, but also form tracks for motor proteins
(kinesins and dyneins) which move various cargoes in a preferential direction along
the microtubules. One of our recent studies aimed at high-resolution imaging of the
nm-spacing of the tubulin subunits in the microtubule lattice. As can be seen in Fig. 1
– imaging resolves the building blocks of the microtubules and shows a distinct dif-
ference in the topography of the interior and exterior surfaces of microtubules: the
exterior shows a clear radial periodicity of about 5 nm, corresponding to the spac-
ing of the protofilaments, while the interior surface reveals also the axial spacing of
tubulin subunits, reflected in a distinct 4 nm repeat [1].
The AFM tip can readily image the subunit structure when the forces used for
imaging are well controlled and low enough (∼ 100 pN), given the limited stability
Figure 1. Both scans show a 100 nm × 100 nm region scanned with 128 × 128 points with
a maximum tip force of 100 pN. A derivative filter was applied. (A) Opened microtubule
(MT) on a DETA surface showing the inner surface of the wall; the protofilaments are
hardly visible, but a striated pattern is visible oriented roughly at a right angle to the MT
axis. The inserted line is exactly perpendicular to the MT axis, showing the angle of the
stripes. A fast-Fourier-transformed image (FFT) (inset) shows weak peaks corresponding
to a periodicity of 4 nm, the size of a tubulin monomer. (B) Intact MT on an APTS surface
showing the outer surface imaged under similar conditions. The protofilaments are visible.
Both in the topography as well as in the FFT there is no indication of the axial monomer
periodicity. The protofilaments give a visible, but not very clear, signature in the FFT,
because only five are visible and their apparent spacing is not constant. (C) Sketch of the
axial cross-section of a protofilament based on cryo-EM results by Nogales et al. (1999).
The periodicity of the monomers is much more pronounced on the inside. This is consistent
with the finding that only an opened MT shows monomer periodicity in the axial direction
(see (A)) (from Ref. [1]).
of protein–protein interactions. A fourfold increase in force (to 400 pN) results in

microtubule destruction [1]. Forces at the limit of destruction occasionally do not
result in complete destruction of the microtubule, but cause local defects as shown in
Fig. 2. Such defects can span several or only 1–2 tubulin subunits. Repeated imaging
of the defective area at low force revealed unequivocally that such defects can anneal,
i. e. the tubulin subunits are able to rearrange such that the gap is closed [1,2].
2.2 Microtubule associated proteins and their influence on microtubule stability

The success of imaging intact microtubules in physiological solutions sparked the
idea to image not only the microtubule itself but also microtubule associated pro-
teins (MAPs; e. g. tau and double cortin) and molecular motors (kinesin). The MAP
Figure 2. (a) shows a typical SFM image of an MT before performing a set of force-distance
measurements (FZ). In (b) a hole can be observed at the spot of the microtubule where
the FZs where performed after the detection of catastrophic breakages in the force distance
curves (from Ref. [2]).
tau is one of the most abundant microtubule associated proteins and is involved in the
stabilization and bundling of axonal microtubules in neurons. Tau is also infamous as
a major component of the fibrillar structures correlated with human neurodegenera-
tive diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Although intense research has revealed much about
tau function and its involvement in Alzheimer’s disease, it has remained unclear how
exactly tau binds to microtubules [3].
In a recent study we used AFM to image microtubules at saturating tau concen-
trations and found an increase in diameter of tau-decorated microtubules of 2 nm.
While tau slightly increased the damage threshold of microtubules, measuring the
radial stiffness of decorated microtubules revealed no difference to undecorated micro-
tubules. Together with the finding that tau binding leaves the proto-filament struc-
ture well visible, this finding is consistent with the model that tau binds along the
ridge of a proto-filament. Finite-element modelling confirmed that the radial elasticity
should be unaffected by tau decoration in that way [3,4].
In contrast to tau, the MAP doublecortin (DCX) has been reported to bind on
the outside of microtubules between the protofilaments. Finite-element modelling of
that geometry predicts an increased radial stiffness of decorated microtubules. DCX
has been found to be of importance for neuronal development. DCX mutations lead
to mislocalization of nuclei in developing neurons and DCX dysfunction in humans
leads to the disorder lisenzephaly. Ongoing AFM experiments with DCX-decorated
microtubules have not yet shown a substantially increased radial stiffness.
2.3 Imaging motor proteins using AFM

We are also investigating the movement of motor proteins on microtubules by AFM.
While dynein is a rather large roughly globular protein and should therefore be well
suited for visualization by AFM, it is very difficult to prepare in pure and active
form. Furthermore the flexibility of the dynein stalk might make imaging of dynein
challenging. Kinesin motors, on the other hand, bind tightly and are relatively easily
Figure 3. AFM scans of MTs. Scale bars represent 100 nm. Because of tip-sample dilation
the MT width appears exaggerated (Schaap et al., 2004, Ref. [1]). (A) MT without tau, show-
ing clearly the protofilaments. (B) For MTs with tau (ratio of 1:1 of tau:tubulin monomers),
the protofilaments are still visible. The height increased by 2 nm (see also Fig. 4). Inset: this
zoom shows a loose fibre with a height of ∼ 0.5 nm that could occasionally be seen. (From
Schaap et al., J. Struct. Biol., 2007, Ref. [3]).
prepared. They are similar in size to tubulin subunits and move with velocities of up
to 1 µm/s along the microtubule at saturating ATP conentrations. We succeeded in
imaging microtubules fully decorated with kinesin and measured a significant increase
in diameter (see Fig. 4). We also observed clusters and single kinesin motors on mi-
crotubules. Repeated scanning indicates that we are able to follow individual kinesin
motors moving along the microtubule. The technical challenge is to increase the rate
of AFM-imaging to video-rate. The biophysics group will focus on the development
of fast AFMs for this and other applications.
2.4 Viral capsids

We have further applied AFM to study the structure and mechanical properties of
viral capsids. The particular viruses we have studied are the bacteriophage Phi29 and
the plant virus cowpea chlorotic mottle virus (CCMV). Much like microtubules, viral
capsids are self-assembling structures with typical sizes of tens of nanometres. Most
viral capsids have highly regular and symmetric structures of more or less icosahedral
symmetry. The shells are assembled from a well defined number of copies of mostly
just one structural protein. Packaging of the DNA into the capsid is in the case of
bacteriophages driven by motor proteins to such packing density that the capsid
has to resist considerable outward directed forces, translated to a pressure about
60 atm [5].
Phi29 capsids deformed elastically under the AFM tip up to a force of about 1 nN
and we could model the initial linear response of the shells by a simple homogeneous
shell model. Under higher forces the shells fractured and collapsed. CCMV virus
shells have the particular property that they expand under a change of pH. We
observed that this expansion which goes along with an effective thinning of the shell
wall caused a transition between two very different elastic responses. At low pH, in
the condensed state, shells deform linearly and then buckle and fracture, whereas in
Figure 4. Finite-element simulations of MTs with bound tau. On top, the cross-sections of
the models with their dimensions in nm are given. Left, MT in the absence of tau. Center,
tau is added as a 0.5 nm thick layer between the protofilaments. Right, tau is added as 1 nm
thick filaments on the ridges of the protofilaments. For all models the elastic modulus of the
added material was set to 0.6 GPa, which is equal to that of the MT. The graph shows the
computed deformation of the tube when indented with a parabolic tip with a 20 nm radius.
The addition of tau as 1 nm filaments on top of the proto-filaments adds very little to the
probed stiffness, but when tau is added as a 0.5 nm layer between the protofilaments, the
stiffness increases by more than 60 %. The inset shows the MT with tau on top of the proto-
filaments. The strain (indicated by brighter colors) is concentrated at the loading point and
between the proto-filaments. (From Ref. [3]).
the expanded state they become super-elastic and can be reversibly compressed until
the opposing walls touch [5–7].
2.5 Self-assembled DNA-tetrahedra
The smallest structures we have studied are nanometre-sized cages of DNA the me-
chanics of which are similar to those of the shells described above. DNA is an inter-
esting material for the construction of nanomaterials because its self-assembly can
be pre-programmed by the sequence of bases. With the tools of current molecular
biology DNA oligomers can be generated with any desired sequence. Together with a
group in Oxford, we have studied a family of DNA nanostructures that were designed
to self-assemble to tetrahedra with double-stranded edges in a single step in only a
Figure 5. Height distribution of MTs. Undecorated MTs show an average diameter of

25.9 nm at a loading force of < 0.1 nN. When MTs are preincubated with tau the height
increased by 2.2 nm. Kinesin added 4.5 nm to the MT height. Note that the 2.2 nm are caused
by tau binding all around MTs while kinesin is bound to MTs just on one side because
in this case MTs were attached to the surface before addition of kinesin. The differences
between the three distributions were tested for statistical significance by a Student’s t-test.
The probability that any pair of the measured distributions belong to the same parent
distribution was estimated to be smaller than 0.1 % by applying the Student’s t-test for
samples with an unequal variance. (From Ref. [1]).
Figure 6. Calculated dependence of F/E on CCMV-capsid deformation for R = 14.3 nm,

h = 3.8 nm, and s = 0.4. The images above the curve show a one-quarter segment of the
capsid at indentations d = 0, 5.6, and 14 nm, and the von Mises stress is indicated by the
colour. The image below the curve shows the buckling of the capsid away from the tip that
is mirrored by a decrease in the slope. (From Ref. [5]).
Figure 7. DNA tetrahedra. (A) Design of a DNA tetrahedron formed by annealing four
oligonucleotides. Complementary subsequences that hybridize to form each edge are identi-
fied by colour. (B) Two views of a spacefilling representation of a 3 × 20/3 × 30-bp tetrahe-
dron. The backbone of each oligonucleotide is indicated by a single colour. (C) AFM image
showing several tetrahedra on a mica surface. (D) AFM images, recorded with ultrasharp
tips, of four tetrahedra; the three upper edges are resolved. (From Ref. [8]).
few seconds [8]. The desired structures can be generated with yields as high as 95%.
We have demonstrated the versatility of this recipe to generate building blocks for
3D nanofabrication by assembling one regular and nine different irregular tetrahedra
and by connecting them with programmable DNA linkers. The DNA tetrahedra are
designed to be mechanically robust; they consist of rigid triangles of DNA helices
covalently joined at the vertices (Fig. 7(A)). The four component oligonucleotides
each run around one face and hybridize to form the doublehelical edges. We have
used AFM to image the tertiary structure of individual tetrahedra and to demon-
strate their rigidity, which we have then exploited to measure the response of DNA
to axial compression. The triangulated stable construction of the tetrahedra is the
only geometry in which compressional deformation of DNA has ever been achieved
in a controlled way.
The tetrahedra imaged by AFM in Fig. 7(C) and (D), were designed to have three
30-base pair (bp) edges meeting at one vertex and three 20-bp edges bounding the
opposite face (a molecular model is shown in Fig. 7(B)). They are expected to bind
to a surface in one of two orientations, with heights of 10.5 nm if resting on the small
face and 7.5 nm if resting on any of the other three faces. Figure 7(C), recorded with
a tip 20 nm in radius, shows several objects with heights consistent with the two
orientations. Figure 7(D) shows high-resolution images, obtained using ultra-sharp
tips with radii of only 2 to 3 nm, that resolve the three upper edges of individual
tetrahedra [8].
Figure 8. Compression of single DNA tetrahedra. Compression curves show linear elastic
response up to a load of 0.1 nN. At higher forces, most tetrahedra deform irreversibly. Offsets
were adjusted to overlap the linear parts of the seven curves. Inset: Reversibility of the elastic
response of a typical tetrahedron. (Figure from Goodman et al., Science 2005, Ref. [8]).
We used these structurally braced tetrahedra to investigate the behaviour of DNA

under compression. Although DNA under tension has been widely studied [9–12],
DNA strands of micrometer length buckle at extremely low forces. To measure the
mechanical response of a single tetrahedron directly, the AFM tip was centered over
a tetrahedron first located in imaging mode and was then moved toward the surface
while recording force. Compression curves for seven distinct 3 × 20/3 × 30-bp tetrahe-
dra are shown in Fig. 8. For forces up to 100 pN, the response was approximately lin-
ear and reversible (Fig. 8, inset) with an average force constant of 0.18(±0.07) Nm−1 .
At higher forces, the response was nonlinear and varied from tetrahedron to tetra-
hedron. From the gradient of the linear part of the measured F-d curve, we infer an
elastic modulus of Kc = 0.7(±0.3) nN for one DNA double helix in compression [8].
3 Motor proteins studied by single-molecule fluorescence

and optical trapping
3.1 Introduction: Kinesin function and structure

Molecular proteins are enzymes which use ATP-hydrolysis to move cargoes along
cytoskeletal filaments (microtubules or actin-filaments). We study how members of
the kinesin family of motor proteins function in microscopic detail. The kinesin family
consists of several classes of motors which are structurally and kinetically diverse,
but share high similarity in the motor domain (or head), which is responsible for
ATP- and microtubule binding. In the case of conventional kinesin (Kinesin-1) two
identical kinesin heavy-chains (KHC) – bearing the head-domain on the N-terminal
Figure 9. Schematic working hypothesis for the processive movement of Kinesin-1 Motors.
For details see text. (from Ref. [14]).
end – dimerize via an extended alpha-helical “coiled-coil” of about 60 nm length. This

rather rigid structure is interrupted by short stretches of disordered domains which
allow the dimer to fold internally, such that the most C-terminal domain, the tail,
and its bound kinesin light chains (KLC) can interact with the head and initial stalk
(also termed neck). This interaction serves as an internal energy saving mechanism,
as cargo also attaches through adapter molecules to the KLC and tail domains: when
there is no cargo bound the motor self-inhibits by back-folding to the head and thus
prevents futile ATP-consumption in the cell [13].
Kinesin-1 binds and transports cargoes such as vesicles over long distances, for
example through axons of nerve cells which can, in extreme cases, be 1 m in length.
Kinesin-1 dimers have structurally evolved to be able to bind to microtubules in
a cyclical, nucleotide-dependent manner such that one head remains bound to the
microtubule at any given time. This “processivity” is terminated in a statistical
manner (Poisson process), on average after about 100–150 cycles. With a spacing of
8 nm between kinesin binding sites on the microtubule lattice, a single motor dimer
can generate up to 7 pN force. Processivity ensures that cargo can be transported by
few motor molecules. Through single-molecule and biochemical assays a basic model
for Kinesin-1 stepping has emerged.
Figure 10. Schematic representation of the three bead-assay used for the determination of
non-processive motor interactions (from Ref. [16]).
3.2 The chemo-mechanical cycle of Kinesin-1

According to this model, Kinesin-1 dimers in solution have ADP bound and can
only bind weakly to microtubules. When a motor interacts with the microtubule,
one of the two heads rapidly looses the ADP, forming a tightly bound, nucleotide-
free state while the second head is prevented from binding to the microtubule until
the nucleotide free, bound head binds ATP from solution. ATP-binding loosens the
neck-linker such that the second head can bind to the microtubule and release the
bound ADP [13–15]. When the hydrolysis product phosphate is released, the rear
head dissociates and the cycle starts again. Fluorescence microscopy allows us to
visualize the movement of single Kinesin-1 dimers under load-free conditions, and
optical trapping experiments make it possible to exert and measure forces.
3.3 Kinesins – structural adaptations for specific cellular tasks

Kinesins come in a variety of forms and functions, and not all are processive. We
also study non-processive kinesins which employ a myosin-like conformational change
of a lever-arm. One example is the dimeric Kinesin-14 ncd. This kinesin plays a
role in the formation of the meiotic and mitotic spindle. It is a minus-end-directed
motor, and kinetic and structural studies indicate that ncd dimers do not move
processively along a microtubule. We have detected the power stroke of ncd using
a double-laser trap and a so-called three bead assay. In the three bead assay, ncd
was adsorbed onto a large (5 µm) bead fixed to a coverslip. A microtubule was then
suspended and manipulated above the stationary bead with a dual-beam laser trap
(see Fig. 10, Ref. [17]). Figure 11 shows a typical time trace of the bead positions,
and the corresponding standard deviation from which binding events can be detected.
Because the data were noisy, the power stroke of about 9 nm could only be extracted
from ensemble-averaged events [16].
Kinesins differ not only in their processivity characteristics, but also in struc-
ture. Some kinesins are monomeric and some are trimeric or tetrameric, adapted
for the specific roles in the cell. We currently investigate the motile behaviour of a
Figure 11. Single-molecule binding events generated by full-length ncd in a three-bead

assay. (a) Raw data, 2-kHz sample rate, immobilized ncd interacting with a suspended
microtubule in the presence of 2 µM ATP. Displacements are measured parallel to the long
axis of the microtubule and plotted against time. (b) Standard deviation of the raw data in
(a), calculated using a 50-point (1-ms) moving window. (c) Wavelet-filtered s.d. data. The
beginning and end of each event were determined by thresholding the wavelet-filtered data
(dashed line; from Ref. [16]).
class of tetrameric kinesins, the Kinesin-5s, in particular the Eg5 motor of Xeno-
pus laevis [9,10,18]. Eg5 has two pairs of motor-domains at each end of an extended
tetrameric coiled-coil. Its cellular function is to aid in the morphogenesis of bipolar
mitotic spindle during cell division. We could show that Eg5 dynamically crosslinks
microtubules and thus provides the forces necessary to slide the spindle poles apart.
We used an in vitro assay with purified Eg5 and fluorescently labeled microtubules.
We bound bundles of microtubules (axonemes) to a glass coverslip, added motors and
more microtubules. We found that single microtubules readily bound to and aligned
with axonemes in the presence of Eg5 [18]. Approximately half of the microtubules
were immotile or moved very slowly (< 10 nm/s) whereas the rest moved along the
axonemes with an average velocity of 40 nm/s. With polarity marked microtubules
as both tracks and substrate we could prove that only anti-parallel microtubules
displayed relative motility. The relative movement of microtubules that were not
aligned parallel showed that the motors could move simultaneously with respect to
both linked microtubules (Fig. 12, Ref. [18]).
While these assays clearly indicated the capability of Eg5-kinesin to cross-linking
and driving anti-parallel microtubules it was not clear whether the motility was driven
by single Eg5-tetramers or by functional aggregates or patches of Eg5 at the cross-link
Figure 12. Eg5 can slide microtubules apart. (a) Sketch of the in vitro assay with micro-
tubules (green) attached via Eg5 motors (yellow) to surface-immobilized axonemes (ma-
genta). The coverslip surface is blocked using a polymer brush. Beads (1-mm diameter,
blue) coated with anti-tubulin antibodies were used in some experiments for manipulation
with optical tweezers. (b) Time-lapse images of both a sliding (white arrow, 40 nm/s) and a
static (yellow arrow) fluorescent microtubule on a darkfield-detected axoneme. (c) Sketch of
the in vitro assay with polarity-marked microtubules. (d) Antiparallel microtubules sliding
apart. The arrow marks the plus-end of the long microtubule, relative to which the short one
moved at 35 nm/s. (e) Two parallel microtubules (one marked with a white line) that were
crosslinked and remained static. (f) Time course of sliding within a bundle of microtubules.
Two bundles first joined and aligned (left panel). Seeds marked with arrows of the same
colour remained stationary relative to each other, but moved at 36 nm/s relative to those
marked with a different colour. Scale bar: 1 mm. (from Ref. [18]).
point. We therefore turned to single-molecule fluorescence experiments with GFP-

labeled Eg5. Experiments showed that single Eg5-tetramers could interact for several
tens of seconds with a microtubule, but their motility appeared irregular, a mixture
of directed motion with diffusive intervals (Fig. 13). The buffer conditions influenced
the prevalence of directed motion, low salt made the motors more directional. Under
these conditions, the drug Monastrol again turned the directionality of the motor
off. Interestingly, the motor was turned on even at higher salt concentration when
it cross-linked two microtubules. Since these higher salt concentrations were close
to physiological conditions, it is likely that Eg5 is regulated in such a way that it
only is turned on when it is primed to do useful work, i. e. is bound between two
microtubules. The basis of this activation remains unclear, but it is likely that the
tail of one dimer interacts with the neck linker of the opposing dimer to effect this
regulation [10].
A further finding that will help to understand the regulation of Eg5 was that an
artificial chimera of Kinesin-1 and Kinesin-5, constructed from the motor domain and
Figure 13. Full-length tetrameric Eg5 is a processive kinesin. (a) Frames from time-lapse
recordings showing Eg5-GFP (green) moving along a microtubule (red). An asterisk (*)
highlights one Eg5-GFP tetramer. The direction of motor movements is indicated by the
green arrow. Bar, 2 mm. (b) Histogram of initial intensities of moving Eg5-GFP spots (n
= 116). Mean intensity (Iavg ) is indicated. (c) Kymographs depicting the motion of Eg5-
GFP along microtubules in the presence of ATP (2 mM). The starting and ending points
of a run are indicated by the green and the red arrows, respectively. Two examples of
irregularities in the directional motility (that is, reversal in direction) are marked with
yellow arrowheads. Bar, 2 mm. Inset: 3× magnifications of the framed area. Bar, 1 mm. (d)
Histogram for the durations of Eg5-GFP-microtubule interactions of individual runs fitted
by a single exponential. Average duration (t) is indicated (n = 239). (e) MSD calculated
from Eg5-GFP motility recordings.The solid curve is a fit to MSD = 1/4v 2 t2 + 2Dt + offset.
Values of v and D are indicated (n = 80). (From Ref. [10]).
Figure 14. Motility and inhibition of single and multiple Eg5Kin motors. (a) Displacement
and force produced by single truncated, C-terminally GFP-tagged Eg5Kin (Eg5Kin-GFP)
motors. Eg5Kin-GFP motors were sparsely covered on silica glass spheres and presented to
a microtubule using a single beam optical trap (g = 0.035 pN/nm). Eg5Kin-GFP moved
the bead processively out of the trap center producing an average force of 4.6 ± 0.1 pN.
Detachment occurs without observable stalling plateaus. (b) Kymograph of single Eg5Kin-
GFP, moving for micrometer-long distances along a TMR-labeled microtubule with an
average speed of 95 nm/s. Incremental, two-step bleaching was observed at points indi-
cated by arrows, quantitatively confirming the dimeric status of Eg5Kin (x-axis=325 s,
y-axis=11.32 µm). (c) Kymographs of single, GFP-tagged Eg5Kin motors moving along
microtubules at increasing Monastrol concentrations (x-axis=200 s, y-axis=10.53 µm). (d)
Graphical summary of motility data at increasing Monastrol concentrations: Eg5Kin-GFP
single molecule association time (red triangle down, IC50 = 6.5 µM), Eg5Kin-GFP single
molecule speeds (black triangles up), Eg5Kin multi motor surface gliding speeds (blue filled
squares). (From Lakämper et al., manuscript in preparation).
neck-linker of Eg5 attached to the stalk of Kinesin 1 moved in a highly processive

fashion along the microtubule for much longer distances than native Eg5. Monastrol
reduced the run-length, but neither the speed nor the binding frequency of single
dimeric chimeras (Fig. 14).
Fluorescence experiments are limited in two important ways. First, the number of
photons emitted by a single dye molecule on an individual motor protein is so small
that fast and accurate position detection is not possible. Second, one can neither
Figure 15. Motor attachment, experimental setup and bead traces. (a)–(d), (f) Possible
Eg5-motor attachments to beads (silica, 0.5 µm diameter) via the genetically encoded N-
terminal His-tag of Eg5. (a) All four motor domains are bound, preventing motility. (b)
One motor domain is unbound, likely allowing only non-processive motility. (c) Two motor
domains are free, one at each end, likely allowing only non-processive motility. (d) One mo-
tor domain is bound, leaving a dimeric motor end free to interact with the microtubule. (e)
Traces of bead motility generated by individual Eg5 (green) and Kinesin-1 (grey) motors.
The averaged (15-point) and median-filtered (0.3 s (Eg5) and 0.05 s (Kinesin-1) sliding win-
dows; rank 10) signal is overlaid in red over both traces. The trap stiffnesses were 0.03 pN/nm
(Kinesin-1) and 0.013 pN/nm (Eg5). (f) One dimer is bound, one dimer is free; sketch of a
silica-sphere with motor held in the laser-trap, such that it interacts with a surface-attached
microtubule track (from Ref. [9]).
exert any force on the motor, nor measure the force exerted by the motor. Both can
be done with optical trapping assays where single motors are attached to optically
trapped micron-sized beads. Motors of the Kinesin-1 class have been shown by such
assays to move in 8 nm steps and exert maximal forces of about 7 pN. Figure 15 shows
the comparison between Kinesin-1 and Eg5 motility [9]. Single Kinesin-1 dimers move
for tens to hundreds of steps and eventually stall at about 6 pN load from the trap.
Eg5, in contrast, shows quite different motility behaviour: the motors moved less
regularly than Kinesin-1, and they released at a load of typically below 2 pN. Nev-
ertheless it was possible to discern 8 nm steps in the motion, confirming that the
motors move in a fundamentally similar manner to Kinesin-1 motors. Our findings
suggest that full-length Eg5-tetramers might employ a so far undescribed mechanism
to limit force-production of individual motors – a sort of slip-clutch-mechanism –
which might have a role in regulating spindle dynamics [9].
3.4 Fluid dynamics, polymer networks, colloids and model systems for cells studied
by microrheology
The machinery that drives essential functions of cells such as locomotion and division
is based on an elastic network of interconnected semiflexible protein filaments, collec-
tively referred to as the cytoskeleton. A major component of the cytoskeleton is the
actin cortex, a dense meshwork of cross-linked actin filaments beneath the plasma
membrane that is controlled by a host of accessory proteins. The physical construction
of the cytoskeleton with its complex hierarchy of structural length scales enables the
cell to produce large changes in physical properties by small chemical interventions,
such as length- or crosslink-control or regulated attachments to other structures in
the cell. The unique sensitivity of cytoskeletal networks stems in large part from the
semiflexible character of its constituents, i. e., the fact that their thermal persistence
length lp (17 µm for filamentous-actin (F-actin)) is orders of magnitude larger than
molecular scales (7 nm filament diameter of actin). The mechanical and dynamical
(rheological) properties of semiflexible polymers have been the focus of intense re-
search in recent years. Apart from their biological role, these networks have proven
to be unique polymeric materials in their own right. In contrast to flexible polymer
networks, the shear modulus of a semiflexible polymer network can be varied over
many orders of magnitude by small changes in cross-linking, and exhibits strong non-
linearities. The dynamics of semiflexible solutions and gels have proven to be much
richer than those of flexible polymers. Even for single filaments there are multiple
distinct modes of relaxation that are qualitatively distinct from those of conventional
polymers. It has proven challenging, however, to quantitatively probe those dynamic
regimes experimentally, because of the extensive bandwidth required [11].
Microrheology based on optical traps and interferometric detection of particle mo-
tions can meet those challenges. Having a bandwidth of 6 orders of magnitude in fre-
quency from 0.1 Hz to 100 kHz, however, provides other interesting options. It makes
it also possible to study general issues of fluid dynamics. A fundamental problem in
hydrodynamics is the response of a liquid to the motion of a small embedded particle.
At sufficiently long times, the well known Stokes velocity field, which decreases as 1/r
away from the particle, will describe this fluid response. For an initial disturbance
due to a local force in the liquid, however, only a small region of the liquid can be
set in motion due to the inertia of the liquid. If the liquid is incompressible, backflow
occurs that is characterized by a vortex ring surrounding the point disturbance. Since
vorticity diffuses within the (linearized) Navier-Stokes equation, propagation of shear√
in the fluid drives the expansion of this vortex ring as a function of time t as t.
The 1/r Stokes flow is established only in the wake of this vortex. While this basic
picture has been known theoretically for simple liquids since Oseen [12], and has been
observed in simulations since the 1960’s [19], this vortex flow pattern has not been
observed directly in experiment. In a recent project we have used the correlations
in thermal fluctuations of small probe particles to resolve this vortex flow field on
the micrometer scale along with its diffusive propagation. We found good agreement
between measured flow patterns and theoretical calculations for simple viscous fluid.
Furthermore, we could demonstrate similar vortex-like flow in viscoelastic media. In
the viscoelastic case, interestingly, vorticity spreads super-diffusively.
Figure 16. Loss modulus (right axes) and elastic modulus (left axes) for four surfactant
concentrations 0.5 (A), 1 (B), 2 (C), and (D) 4 wt % are plotted as a function of frequency.
Curves are in (A) and (C): macrorheology (circles), 1PMR (black lines), and 2PMR (gray
lines) in 0.5 and 2 wt %; in (B) and (D): 1PMR with 20 kHz sampling rate (gray line) and
1PMR with 195 kHz sampling rate (black lines). All microrheology data were logarithmically
binned with the factor of 1.2 relating the widths of successive bins. (from Ref. [21]).
To characterize the new microrheology methods we have been developing in their

performance on polymer samples we performed a rigorous comparison between es-
tablished conventional rheology and microrheology on a stable, well known sys-
tem namely entangled solutions of wormlike micelles which behave like a simple
Maxwell fluid at low frequencies. To generate enough of an overlap in bandwidth
between macro- and microrheology we used a specialized design based on piezoelec-
tric actuators for the macrorheology. Wormlike micelles are cylindrical assemblies
of amphiphilic molecules that form spontaneously in aqueous solutions at particular
concentrations and temperature conditions. We have used cetylpyridinium chloride
(CPyCl) as the surfactant and sodium salicylate (NaSal) as a strongly binding coun-
terion. The wormlike micelles formed in this system have a diameter of 2 to 3 nm,
contour lengths of 100 nm to 1 µm, and a persistence length of order 10 nm. At the
concentrations we used, the mesh size varied from about 0 to 10 nm [20,21].
We have compared one-particle and two-particle microrheology with macrorheol-
ogy. With all three techniques we have obtained frequency dependent complex shear
moduli over large and overlapping frequency ranges (Fig. 16). Excellent agreement
of the results from all three techniques was observed. This was in principle not un-
expected given that characteristic length scales of the solution, such as persistence
length and mesh size, were significantly smaller than the probe particle size. Our re-
sults provided a much needed quantitative verification of microrheology on a simple
model system [20,21].
With the approach validated, results on more biologically relevant systems could
be understood. We initially examined in vitro reconstituted networks of entangled
filamentous actin by one-particle passive microrheology. A main result was the high-
frequency scaling behaviour of the shear modulus G∗ (ω) ∼ ω 3/4 with a power law
exponent that is characteristic for semiflexible polymer networks [11]. Probing with
single particles is, however, likely to misreport the actual bulk shear viscosity of the
embedding medium if there are characteristic length scales of the medium that are
comparable to the probe size. This is the case for actin networks, and an effect that
tends to make the measured shear modulus lower than the true bulk value is steric
depletion of the network around the probe particle. This problem can be avoided
by evaluating the correlated fluctuations of a particle pair in two-particle passive
microrheology. With this technique we again analyzed actin solutions and obtained
quantitative agreement with theoretical predictions of the shear modulus in both
amplitude and frequency dependence (Fig. 17, Ref. [22]).
In systems that are in thermodynamic equilibrium, active and passive microrheol-
ogy should give the same results. In systems out of equilibrium, though, the combina-
tion of active and passive microrheology can be employed to characterize non-thermal
fluctuations. Developing a statistical mechanical description of non-equilibrium sys-
tems such as glasses still remains an important challenge in physics [24]. One of the
most interesting recent developments along these lines is the proposal to generalize
the fluctuation dissipation theorem (FDT) to non-equilibrium situations. The FDT
relates the response of a system to a weak external perturbation to the relaxation of
the spontaneous fluctuations in equilibrium. The response function is proportional to
the power spectral density of thermal fluctuations, with a prefactor given by the tem-
perature. This suggests a generalization for systems out of equilibrium, in which the
(non-equilibrium) fluctuations are related to the response via a time-scale-dependent
effective temperature. While this has been studied extensively theoretically, the ex-
perimental support for a meaningful effective temperature is unclear. There have been
few experiments and the usefulness of the extension of the FDT to non-equilibrium
situations is still a matter of controversy. We have used a combination of active and
passive (fluctuation-based) microrheology techniques that provide a way to directly
test the applicability of the FDT. We have examined the validity of the FDT in a col-
loidal glass, the synthetic clay Laponite. For this system conflicting results had been
reported previously, that may in part have been due to the use of a limited experimen-
tal window in both frequency and aging time. We have performed measurements over
a wide range of frequencies and aging times. Contrary to previous reports, we find
no violation of the FDT and thus no support for an effective temperature different
from the bath temperature [24].
While the aging colloidal glasses are changing very slowly and are therefore not
very strongly non-equilibrium, a living cell shows much stronger signatures of en-
ergy dissipation, i. e. non-equilibrium dynamics. Many cellular functions such as cell
Figure 17. (a) Storage modulus G0 (ω) and (b) (absolute) loss modulus G00 (ω) of 1 mg/ml
solutions of F-actin filaments without (squares) and with (triangles) cross-linking plotted
against frequency f = ω/2π. Solid lines: theoretical modelling. (From Ref. [22]).
Figure 18. Schematic drawing of a bipolar myosin filament interacting with two actin
filaments. Polarity of actin is indicated by the +/− signs (myosin moves toward the plus
end; from Ref. [23]).
locomotion or cell division involve movement and rearrangements of the cell struc-
tures that occur on the scale of seconds to minutes. The cytoskeleton is a network of
semiflexible linear protein polymers (actin filaments, microtubules, and intermediate
filaments) that is responsible for most of the mechanical functions of cells. It dif-
fers from common polymer materials in both the complexity of composition and the
fact that the system is not in thermodynamic equilibrium. Chemical non-equilibrium
drives mechanoenzymes (motor proteins) that are the force generators in cells. The
cytoskeleton is thus an active material that can adapt its mechanics and perform me-
chanical tasks such as cell locomotion or cell division. We have explored in a recent
project how non-equilibrium motor activity controls the mechanical properties of a
simple three-component in vitro model cytoskeletal network consisting of a cross-
linked actin network with embedded force-generating myosin II motors which are the
skeletal muscle motors [23].
We formed myosin “minifilaments” (Fig. 18) that can link different actin filaments
and move these filaments relative to each other in the presence of ATP. In the absence
of ATP, these motor complexes statically cross-link F-actin and generate bundles
that can be seen in a light microscope (data not shown here). In the presence of
ATP, minifilaments generate contractile forces that can result in actin aggregation
and phase separation, a phenomenon known as superprecipitation. To stabilize the
networks and delay the onset of superprecipitation, we used F-actin cross-linked
Figure 19. Mechanical response of cross-linked nonactive and active gels (actin and myosin
concentrations as in Fig. 1). (A) The imaginary part of the response function α00 measured
by AMR (circles) and the normalized power spectrum ωC(ω)/2kB T measured by PMR
(lines). Open circles and the dashed line denote cross-linked actin without myosin; solid
circles and the solid line denote networks with myosin 2.5 hours after sample preparation.
For up to 5 hours, α00 and ωC(ω)/2kB T with and without myosin show good agreement,
indicating that myosin activity did not yet produce observable non-equilibrium fluctuations.
(B) The same as (A) but 6.8 hours after sample preparation (with myosin). Below 10 Hz,
non-equilibrium fluctuations are observable as an enhancement of ωC(ω)/2kB T relative to
α00 (from Ref. [23]).
Figure 20. Effect of filament tension on the response of the active networks (actin and
myosin concentrations as in Fig. 19. Spectra ωC(ω)/2kB T measured with PMR at 2.5 hours
(open red circles) and 9.3 hours (open blue circles) and α00 measured with AMR at 9.3 hours
(solid blue circles) after sample preparation (initial [ATP] = 3.5 mM). In the presence of
non-equilibrium activity, the response function is reduced, indicating a stiffer sample, which
can be fully accounted for by prestress/tension of filaments. Theoretical predictions are
shown for a network with filament tension of 0.1 pN, cross-link distance lc = 2.6 µm (green
curve), and no tension with the same lc (black curve). Independently known parameters:
friction coefficient z = 0.00377 Pa/s, persistence length lp = 17 × 10−6 m, probe radius
a = 2.5 mm. The system strongly violates the FD theorem and that it does so because of
the contractility of the acto-myosin system [23].
by biotin and neutravidin. We then measured the mechanical properties of these

networks by active microrheology and found agreement with previous data from
cross-linked actin networks (Fig. 19, Ref. [23]).
Passive microrheology gave results that agreed completely. With ATP-energized
myosin motors, however, the active processes created additional fluctuations and
thus violated the FD theorem [23]. The motor-generated tensions in the network also
dramatically boosted the shear modulus, by up to a factor of 100 (Fig. 20).
Thus, actin, myosin, and cross-links are sufficient to capture essential and general
features of contractility and mechanical adaptation in cytoskeletal networks. These
observations suggest mechanisms by which cells could rapidly modulate their stiffness
by flexing their internal “muscles” without changing the density, polymerization, or
bundling state of F-actin. Cells can actively adapt their elasticity to the mechanics
of the extracellular matrix or to an externally applied force, and motors could be the
cause for that. From a materials perspective, this in vitro model system exhibits an
active state of matter that adjusts its own mechanical stiffness via internal forces.
This work can be a starting point for exploring both model systems and cells in
quantitative detail, with the aim of uncovering the physical principles underlying the
active regulation of the complex mechanical functions of cells.
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[18] L. C. Kapitein, E. J. Peterman, B. H. Kwok, J. H. Kim, T. M. Kapoor, and C. F.
Schmidt, ‘The bipolar mitotic kinesin Eg5 moves on both microtubules that it
crosslinks’, Nature 435, 114 (2005).
[19] B. J. Alder and T. E. Wainwright, ‘Velocity autocorrelations for hard spheres’, Phys.
Rev. Lett. 18, 988 (1967).
[20] M. Buchanan, M. Atakhorrami, J. F. Palierne, F. C. MacKintosh, and C. F. Schmidt,
‘High-frequency microrheology of wormlike micelles’, Phys. Rev. E 72, 011504 (2005).
[21] M. Buchanan, M. Atakhorrami, J. F. Palierne, and C. F. Schmidt, ‘Comparing
macrorheology and one- and two-point microrheology in wormlike micelle solutions’,
Macromolecules 38, 8840 (2005).
[22] G. H. Koenderink, M. Atakhorrami, F. C. MacKintosh, and C. F. Schmidt, ‘High-
frequency stress relaxation in semiflexible polymer solutions and networks’, Phys. Rev.
Lett. 96, 138307 (2006).
[23] D. Mizuno, C. Tardin, C. F. Schmidt, and F. C. MacKintosh, ‘Nonequilibrium mechan-
ics of active cytoskeletal networks’, Science 315, 370 (2007).
[24] S. Jabbari-Farouji, D. Mizuno, M. Atakhorrami, F. C. MacKintosh, C. F. Schmidt,
E. Eiser, G. H. Wegdam, and D. Bonn, ‘Fluctuation-dissipation theorem in an aging
colloidal glass’, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 108302 (2007).
Index
ablation, 217, 223 vibration

dynamics, 222, 236, 243 control, 107, 119
efficiency, 231, 236, 245, 248, 250, 251 isolation, 121
explosive, 244 adaptive
microsecond, 242, 245 digital filter, 110
model, 250 feedforward control, 111
nanosecond, 237, 244 noise cancelling, 112
photochemical, 225 optics, 107, 123
photothermal, 225 windowing (ESPI), 268
plume, 236 added mass, 173, 187
dynamics, 238, 240 Adler’s equation, 423
shielding, 249, 251 afterbounce, 147
recoil pressure, 234, 236, 238, 239 amphiphiles, 368
threshold, 228, 236, 237, 244–246, 249– ANC – see: active noise control
251 anisotropic crystal, 314
absorber anti-sound, 108
active, 111, 115, 117 antiphase signal, 107, 108, 113, 114
matched, 109 aqueous solution, 333
absorption Arnol’d tongue, 423
coefficient, ultrasonic, 341 artificial cell, 435, 438
optical, 222 artwork
spectra, ultrasonic, 333 deterioration, 261
acoustic monitoring, 260, 264
cavitation, 139, 171, 184, 191, 194, aspherical bubble collapse, 149, 150, 152,
195 153, 156, 157
feedback, 110 association
force on bubble, 171, 183, 194 multistep, 333, 334, 360
quadripole, 113 scheme of Eigen-Tamm, 343, 344
stimuli, 37, 41 atomic force microscopy, 435, 440, 441, 444
transfer function, 110 attenuation
tripole, 109 spectra, 374
acoustical spectrometry, 368 spectrometry, 371
actin, 457, 458 attractor, 143, 408, 417
filament, 445, 453, 455–457 chaotic, 409, 411, 418, 427
network, 455, 457 coexisting, 144, 408, 412
active periodic, 409
absorber, 111, 115, 117 audiology, 67
flow control, 107, 125 auditory filter, 38, 40, 43
headset, 115 amplitude characteristic, 44
hydromount, 122 gamma-tone, 44
impedance control, 117 phase characteristic, 41
muffler, 114, 118 autocorrelation, 46, 47
noise control, 107, 108 automaton, 406, 415
freefield, 118 autoregression frequency analysis, 302
optics, 123
sound control, 107 backscattering, 288
structural control, 124 basilar membrane, 41, 43, 45, 64
462 Index
basin of attraction, 144 cluster, 174, 180, 181, 184, 191, 192
beamwalk, 290, 291, 293, 294 collapse, 147, 148, 152, 154, 158, 160,
beat frequency, 281, 288, 289, 297, 305 171, 178
Bechgaard salt, 315, 323 aspherical, 149, 150, 152, 153, 156,
Beer-Lambert law, 219 157
Bhattacharjee-Ferrell function, 393 near wall, 151, 154
bifurcation, 405, 408, 410, 416 pressure, 154
codimension-one, 412 counterjet, 150
codimension-two, 412 cylindrical, 150, 153, 159
control, 125 dancing motion, 163, 180
curve, 412 diffusional equilibrium, 157, 182
diagram, 177, 410, 411 dissolution, 182, 189
period-doubling, 142, 143, 409 dynamics, 139, 149, 171, 175
saddle-node, 408 near wall, 148, 149, 151, 154
set, 145, 412 radial, 163, 167
structure, 410, 412 elongated, 150, 152
symmetry-breaking, 409 equilibrium radius, 140, 143, 149, 176,
binary fragmentation, 205, 207, 210, 213 182, 191
binaural erosion, 139, 148, 154
hearing, 59 explosion, 174
masking level difference, 60 formation, 224, 229, 235
unmasking, 59 growth, 147, 182, 232
binodal curve, 225, 227, 232, 233 inception, 171
biological tissue, 217, 218 interaction, 148, 168, 185, 190, 191
biophysics, 435 jet formation, 149, 150, 154, 155
biopolymer, 378 laser-induced, 148, 149, 152, 154–156,
Bjerknes force, 183, 187–189, 195 158, 168
primary, 183–185, 193 life cycle, 171, 173, 183, 188, 194
secondary, 185, 186, 190 merging, 191
Blake threshold model, 140
dynamic, 177, 178, 182, 186 Gilmore, 176
static, 176, 177 Keller-Miksis, 146, 176
blind source separation, 116 Rayleigh-Plesset, 141, 165, 176
blue bronze, 315, 320, 322 motion, 171, 173, 183, 187, 188, 190,
BMLD – see: binaural masking level dif- 192, 194
ference nucleation, 150, 171, 173–175, 226,
boiling 228–230
confined, 232–234, 242, 244 heterogeneous, 228, 234
explosive, 228, 231, 235, 236 homogeneous, 229
normal, 228, 231 rate, 231
Bose-Einstein condensate, 312 oscillation, 139, 146, 148, 171, 176,
boundary integral method, 152 185
box-counting dimension, 417, 418, 420 afterbounce, 147
Broomhead-King coordinates, 421 chaotic, 142, 144, 145
Bruggeman mixture relation, 349, 350 cycle, 146, 147
bubble, 201, 205, 213 nonlinear, 184, 186, 188, 405
acoustic force on, 171, 183, 194 steady-state, 142
chaotic oscillation, 142, 144, 145, 177 oscillator, 142, 145
chemistry, 163, 165, 167 nonlinear, 139, 141, 143, 405
cloud, 168, 172 phase diagram, 145, 189
Index 463
pinch-off, 174 rupture, 205

radius, critical, 230 centrifugal pendulum, 120
rectified diffusion, 171, 173, 181–183, Chandler wobble, 282, 297
188, 189 chaos, 143, 144, 405, 412, 416
resonance frequency, 177 control, 125, 406, 427
response curve, 143–145 high-dimensional, 413
shape stability, 171, 173, 178, 186, spatio-temporal, 429
188 chaotic
shock wave, 152–155, 201, 205 attractor, 409, 411, 418, 427
single, 139 bubble oscillation, 142, 144, 145, 177
sphericity, 156, 161, 162 dynamics, 139, 142, 144, 145, 405,
splitting, 189, 191 406, 415, 417
streamer, 174, 175, 191, 192 fluctuations, 406
structure, 171, 190, 191, 195 oscillations, 423–425
cone, 193, 194 spiral waves, 429, 430
filamentary, 191, 192 switching, 416
jellyfish, 192, 193 chaotification, 125
surface charge
instability, 145, 148, 162, 174, 178, density wave, 311, 317, 318
189, 191, 194 fluctuations, 321
mode, 179 localization, 317
torus, 150, 154, 155 order, 311, 315, 317, 322
trapping, 139, 146, 148, 156, 168, 178, chemical equilibrium, 377
180, 182 Chinese terracotta army, 268
vapour, 228 clinical study of lithotripsy, 211
closed-quotient, 32, 33
capacity dimension, 417, 418, 420 clusters, 368
carbon nanotubes, 314 coagulation of tissue, 217
causality, 118 cochlear implant, 67
condition, 113 cocktail-party effect, 60
problem, 120 coexisting attractors, 144, 408, 412
cavitation, 200, 205, 210, 213, 214 coherence layer, 270
acoustic, 139, 171, 184, 191, 194, 195 collagen, 218, 219, 222, 233
damage, 154, 155 collapse
erosion, 205, 206 bubble, 171, 178
hydrodynamic, 148 bubble near wall, 154
inception, 173 pressure, 154
luminescence, 155, 156, 160, 162, 163 shock wave, 154, 155
nuclei, 234 collective excitations, 312, 317, 318, 325,
optic, 148, 149, 152, 154–156, 168 328
femtosecond, 150, 152, 160, 163 colloid, 437, 453
in sound field, 157 colloidal glass, 455
secondary, 150, 151 complex
structure control, 175 dielectric spectra, 333
threshold, 173 dynamics, 405, 406, 417
vapour, 175 spatio-temporal, 406, 428, 429
cavitation bubble – see: bubble of encounter, 359
cell system, 171, 435
division, 448, 453, 457 tones, 38, 41, 44
locomotion, 453, 457 concentration fluctuations, 387, 395
464 Index
cone bubble structure, 193, 194 decorrelation

confined boiling, 232–234, 242, 244 analysis, 261
confinement geometric, 267, 268
stress, 223, 234–236, 243, 251 degassing of liquids, 183
thermal, 223, 248, 251 degree of dissociation, 382
conservation of art, 259 delay
contact ion pair, 334 coordinates, 420
control map, 420
bifurcation, 125 embedding, 420, 421, 424
chaos, 125 reconstruction, 424
delayed feedback, 125, 427 time, 420, 427
feedforward, 111 delayed feedback control, 125, 427
invasive, 427 demixing, critical, 368, 391
multiple delay feedback, 427, 428 denaturation
noninvasive, 427 kinetics, 234
notch filter feedback, 429 thermal, 222, 239, 244
of cavitation structures, 175 derivative coordinates, 420
of chaos, 406, 427 DIC – see: digital image correlation
of flow, 107, 120, 125 dielectric
of impedance, 117 complex spectra, 333
of noise, 107, 108, 118 measurements, 311, 325
of sound, 107 relaxation, 346
of vibration, 107, 119 time, 367
structural, 124 saturation, 349
system, active, 110, 111 spectrometry, 338–340
controllability of sound fields, 118 diffusion, 165
correlation equilibrium, 157, 182
dimension, 417, 418 gas, 148, 163, 172, 175, 176, 178, 180,
fringes, 262 182, 188, 190, 191, 194
sum, 418 rectified, 171, 173, 181–183, 188, 189
counter-jet, 139, 150, 151 thermal, 223
coupled oscillators, 425, 429 digital
critical filter, adaptive, 110
bands, 29, 38 image correlation, 260, 261, 268
bandwidth, 47, 51 dimension
bubble radius, 230 box-counting, 417, 418, 420
demixing, 368, 391 capacity, 417, 418, 420
mixture, 387 correlation, 417, 418
cross-linking of polymers, 453, 456, 458 embedding, 420
crossover function, 392 fractal, 417, 418, 420
crosstalk cancellation, 116 generalised, 417
crystal, anisotropic, 314 Rényi, 417, 418
cubic nonlinearity, 409 dislocation, 313
cultural heritage monitoring, 259 dispersion of sound velocity, 374
cylindrical bubble, 150, 153, 159 Dissado-Hill model, 357
cytoskeleton, 438, 445, 453, 457, 458 dissociation
degree, 382
dancing bubble, 163, 180 stepwise, 368
Debye relaxation, 344, 370 vapour, 165
Debye-Eigen-Fuoss theory, 359 dissolution of bubbles, 182, 189
Index 465
diurnal polar motion, 296–299 spectrum, 56, 58

DNA, 378, 436, 441 equilibrium
compressional deformation, 444, 445 bubble radius, 140, 143, 149, 176, 182,
programmable linkers, 444 191
tetrahedra, 442, 444 chemical, 377
driven oscillator, 139, 177 constant, 377
droplet ejection, 237, 238, 240, 243 diffusional, 157, 182
dry friction damper, 120 radius, diffusional, 182
Duffing oscillator, 405, 407–412, 418 erosion by bubbles, 139, 148, 154, 155, 205,
Duffing, Georg, 407, 408 206
dynamic error path, 110
Blake threshold, 177, 178, 182, 186 ESPI – see: electronic speckle pattern in-
light scattering, 393 terferometry
scaling ESWL – see: lithotripsy
hypothesis, 387 ether theory, 280
model, 391, 394 evanescent wave, 436
dynamics event-driven algorithm, 165
chaotic, 139, 142, 144, 145, 405, 406, explosive
415, 417 ablation, 244
complex, 405, 406, 417 boiling, 228, 231, 235, 236
spatio-temporal, 406, 428, 429 external cavity, 413
dynein, 438, 440 extracellular matrix, 218, 232, 233, 239
extracorporeal lithotripsy – see: lithotripsy
earth
rotation, 279, 280, 290, 301, 305 Förster-Resonance Energy Transfer, 436
strain, 289, 306 Farey tree, 144
tides, 296, 298, 299 feedback
earthquake, 283, 300, 301, 306 acoustic, 110
echo cancellation, 116, 117 cancellation, 111
Eg5 kinesin, 448–452 control
Eigen-Tamm mechanism, 333, 360 delayed, 125
eigenfrequency, 406, 407 multiple-delay, 406
electroglottography, 32 feedforward control, 110, 111
electrolyte, 333, 343 Feintuch algorithm, 111
electronic speckle pattern interferometry, femtosecond laser, 150, 152, 160
259, 262, 264 Fermi
low-coherence, 269 energy, 321
microscopic, 268 liquid, 312, 317, 328
time average, 273 surface, 318
electrorheological fluid, 122 surface nesting, 322
embedding dimension, 420 surface, quasi one-dimensional, 315
energy fibre-optic
focussing in a bubble, 157, 160 gyroscope, 279, 280, 303
harvesting, 124 hydrophone, 153, 203, 204, 212
ensemble modelling, 422 reference link, 274
enthalpy of reaction, 377 filamentary bubble structure, 191, 192
ENTOOL, 422 filtered-x-LMS algorithm, 110–112
envelope Floquet multiplier, 179
distribution, 55 flow
fluctuation, 47, 49–51, 54, 57 control, 107, 120, 125
466 Index
turbulent, 111, 126 oscillation, 27, 31, 33

fluctuation correlation length, 387, 391 volume velocity, 32
fluctuation-dissipation theorem, 455, 458 Glottal-to-Noise Excitation ratio (GNE),
fluctuations, 315, 321, 367 28, 31, 33
chaotic, 406 Goldstone mode, 327, 328
charge density wave, 321 Grüneisen coefficient, 223, 250
concentration, 387, 395 granularity, 171
laser green problem, 428
intensity, 405, 413, 426, 428 gyroscope
power, 286 equation, 280, 300
non-equilibrium, 457 fibre-optic, 279, 280
non-thermal, 455 resolution, 284, 285
order parameter, 391 scaling factor, 282, 284, 287
fluid dynamics, 453 stability, 282
fluorescence
experiments, 437, 445, 449, 451 Haas effect, 37
microscopy, 435, 436, 447 hard-sphere model, 165
force measurement, 436, 442, 447, 451, 452 harmonic
forecasting of nonlinear system, 406, 421 complex tones, 38, 39
fractal oscillator, 406, 407
dimension, 417, 418, 420 resonance, 143, 144, 146
dimension, 406 He-Ne laser, 283, 286, 295
set, 409, 411 hearing research, 37, 50, 56
fragmentation helicopter noise, 120, 122, 126
binary, 205, 207, 210, 213 Helmholtz-Huygens equation, 109
by cavitation, 205 heterogeneous nucleation, 228, 234
hidden Markov model, 25
Göttinger Hoarseness Diagram, 26, 31 Higgs mechanism, 328
gain high-dimensional chaos, 413
factor, 296 high-frequency measurements, 329
medium, 281 high-speed imaging, 149, 150, 154, 155,
gamma tone, 44, 45, 50 172, 187
Gaussian noise, 46, 49, 50, 56 stereoscopic, 191
generalised Hilbert envelope, 48, 49
dimension, 417 Hill relaxtaion function, 384
synchronisation, 426 Hill’s equation, 179
geodesy, 279, 287 homogeneous nuclation, 229
geometric decorrelation, 267, 268 Hopkinson effect, 203, 205, 210
geophysics, 279, 287 Hubbard model, 322
GEOsensor, 284, 286, 300, 304 Hubbard-Onsager theory, 350
GHD – see: Göttinger Hoarseness Diagram Huygens principle, 108
GHDT, 31 Huygens, C., 422
giant reponse of bubble, 144, 145 hybrid system, 406, 415
Gilmore model, 141, 147, 148, 159, 160, hydrodynamic cavitation, 148
176 hydrogen bond network, 367
Ginzburg-Landau equation, 428–430 hydrophobic interactions, 368
global model of nonlinear system, 422 hydrophone, fibre-optic, 153, 203, 204, 212
glottal hydroxyl radical, 167
area, 33 hyperchaos, 414
excitation, 27, 29 hysteresis, 143, 144, 177, 408, 413
Index 467
identical synchronisation, 425, 426 micelles, 379

image segmentation, 33 phase transition, 224, 225
impedance control, 117 known plaintext attack, 425
inception Kohonen feature map, 28
of bubbles, 171 Kramers-Kronig relations, 336, 374
of cavitation, 173
inclusion complex, 375 Lang-Kobayashi equations, 413, 414
incomplete dissociation, 333 laser
infrared spectroscopy, 325 ablation, 261
inner sphere complex, 334 of tissue, 217
input impedance measurement, 342 bubble – see also: bubble, 149
inspection of art work, 259 coupled semiconductor, 426
instability frequency-doubled Nd:YAG, 428
parametric, 179 guide star, 123
Rayleigh-Taylor, 179 gyroscope, 279, 290, 300
intensity fluctuations of laser, 405, 413, intensity
426, 428 fluctuations, 405, 413, 426, 428
interacting agents, 429 spikes, 242
interaction of bubbles, 148, 168, 190, 191 plasma, 168
interaural power
intensity difference, 60 drop-out, 413
time difference, 60 jump-up, 414
interferometer, microwave, 338, 340 semiconductor, 405, 413, 414
internal shock wave, 156, 165, 241 solid-state, 405
invasive control, 427 stabilisation, 428
inverse filtering, 32 laser-induced
ion complex, 333, 374 breakdown, 148, 168, 236
ionic surfactant, 382 bubble, 148, 149, 152, 154–156, 158,
irregularity measure, 26 168
isodesmic reaction scheme, 378, 386 laser-tissue interaction, 217, 237
isomerisation, 370, 380 LF-model, 32
life cycle of bubble, 171, 173, 183, 188, 194
jellyfish bubble structure, 192, 193 linear oscillator, 407
jet formation, 149, 150, 154, 155 liquids, complex dynamics, 367
jitter, 26, 27, 31 lithiasis, 200
JMC theory, 108, 109 lithotomy, 199
lithotripsy, 199
Kamenz (Saxony), 274 wide-focus, low-pressure, 211, 212
Karhunen-Loéve transformation, 421 lithotripter, 200
Kawasaki function, 393 local
KCP, 314, 318, 319 control, 115
Keller-Miksis model, 146, 176 fluctuations, 389
kidney stone, 199, 207, 211 model of nonlinear system, 422
kinesin, 438–440, 445–447, 449, 452 lock-in effect, 283
stepping, 446 logistic process, 416
kinetic Love wave, 300, 307
polarization deficiency, 349 low-coherence ESPI, 269
spinodal, 230 low-dimensional metals, 311
kinetics low-frequency fluctuations, 413, 414, 426
liquids, 335 low-noise noise, 47, 49, 50, 56
468 Index
LPC, 29 modelling of nonlinear system, 421

luminescence global, 422
of bubbles, 155, 156, 160, 162, 163 local, 422
pulse width, 156 modulation
Luttinger liquid, 317 filter bank, 53, 58
Lyapunov filtering, 25
exponent, 406, 414, 417, 419, 420 molecular
spectrum, 419 biology, 442
dynamics simulations, 139, 163, 165,
Müstair (Graubünden), 275 250
macrorheology, 454 interaction, 367
magnetic bearing, 119, 125 motion, 367
magnetorheological fluid, 122 motor, 436–439
masked threshold, 41, 44, 47, 51, 52 monitoring of art work, 259, 264
matched absorber, 109 monodromy matrix, 179
material ejection, 217, 232–235, 237, 242, monomer
243, 245, 250 concentration, 382
secondary, 244, 250 exchange, 384
matrix-continuous tissue, 218 motion of bubbles, 171, 173, 183, 187, 188,
mean waveform matching coefficient, 27, 190, 192, 194
31 motor protein, 437, 438, 440, 441, 445
mechanical properties of tissue, 220 Mott insulator, 311
membranes, 368 multibubble system, 171, 190, 194
merging of bubbles, 191 multiple delay feedback control, 427, 428
metal-insulator transition, 322, 329 multiplied noise, 54, 56, 60
micelle, 368, 379 multistability, 405, 413
formation, 395 multistep association, 333, 334, 360
kinetics, 379 multivalent salt, 333
microbubble shedding, 163, 180, 191 MWC – see: mean waveform matching co-
microcrack, 207 efficient
microdynamics of liquids, 335 myosin, 456–458
microheterogeneous structure, 387
microrheology, 437, 453–455, 458 nanobubble, 169, 175
microscopic ESPI, 268 nanofabrication, 444
microsecond ablation, 242, 245 nanomaterial, 442
microtubule, 438, 439, 441, 442, 445, 446, nanoparticle, 172
448, 449, 451, 457 nanosecond ablation, 237, 244
height, 443 nanosurgery of cells, 235
local defect, 439 nanotechnology, 312
stability, 439 nanowire, 313
microwave Navier-Stokes equation, 453
experiments, 313, 319, 329 Nd:YAG laser, 261, 428
interferometer, 338, 340 nearest neighbours, 422
mixed-stack crystal, 326 Neues Museum (Berlin), 275
mixture neuron, 421, 440, 446
relation, 349, 350 neutral-ionic phase transition, 326, 329
segregation, 165, 167 NMR spectroscopy, 325
modal noise
control, 118 additive, 26
restructuring, 124 cancelling, adaptive, 112
Index 469
control, 107, 108 observation spillover, 120

freefield, 118 OH radical, 167
system, 110, 111 oligomeric species, 386
Gaussian, 46, 49, 50, 56 one-dimensional solids, 311
helicopter, 120, 122, 126 open-quotient, 32
inherent fluctuations, 47 ophthalmology, 217
low-noise, 47, 49, 50, 56 optic cavitation, 148, 149, 152, 154–156,
measure, 27 168
multiplied, 54, 56, 60 femtosecond, 150, 152, 160, 163
reduction, 25, 108, 124 in sound field, 157
regular zero crossing, 54 optical
reproducible, 47 absorption, 222
shielding, 109, 119 coefficient of water, 220, 221
signal, 46, 47 dynamic changes, 220
non-equilibrium of tissue, 218, 219
dynamics, 455 coherence tomography, 269
fluctuations, 457 penetration depth, 219–221, 223, 228,
interphase mass transfer, 227, 237 247, 248, 251
system, 438, 455 scattering in tissue, 219
non-planar ring resonator, 290 shielding, 248, 249, 251
non-thermal fluctuations, 455 trapping, 435, 437, 445, 447, 451–453
noninvasive control, 427 optics
nonionic surfactant, 382 active, 123
nonlinear adaptive, 123
bubble oscillations, 139, 141, 143, 171, order parameter, 326
176, 177, 405 fluctuations, 391
dynamical system, 107, 125, 144, 405 ordering phenomena, 311, 315
dynamics, 405, 420 organic
growth of masking, 58 conductor, 311, 315, 329
oscillation of bubbles, 184, 186, 188 solids, 311
oscillator, 139, 141, 143, 405–407, 412 oscillation
prediction, 421 glottal, 27, 31, 33
resonance, 407, 408, 412 of bubbles, 171, 176, 185
bubble, 143, 144, 177, 182, 186 oscillator
system, 405 bubble, 142, 145
forecasting, 406, 421 coupled, 425, 429
modelling, 421 driven, 139, 177
nonlinearity, 171, 186, 405, 407 Duffing, 405, 407–412, 418
cubic, 409 linear, 406, 407
normal boiling, 228, 231 nonlinear, 139, 141, 143, 406, 407,
notch filter feedback control, 429 412
nuclear fusion, 172 outer sphere complex, 334
nucleation, 150, 171, 173–175, 207, 228– outer-outer sphere complex, 334
230
heterogeneous, 228, 234 parameter
homogeneous, 229 estimation, 426
rate, 231 space diagram, 145
spontaneous, 173 parametric instability, 179
partial synchronisation, 425
observability in sound fields, 118 particle model, 171, 173, 191, 192, 195
470 Index
peak factor, 38, 43 formation, 236, 242

Peierls Poincaré
instability, 318 map, 409, 411, 418
mode, 327 section, 409, 411, 418
transition, 315, 321 point of silence, 107
perceptron, 29, 33 Poisson process, 446
percussion technique, 273 polymer network, 437, 453, 455
period bubbling, 143 power
period-doubling drop-out, laser, 413
bifurcation, 142, 143, 409 jump-up, laser, 414
cascade, 144, 409, 412 law, correlation length, 387
route to chaos, 142 predictability, 405
periodic attractor, 409 preferential orientation of molecule, 349,
permittivity, static, 349 351
persistence length, 453, 455, 458 primary Bjerknes force, 183–185, 193
perturbation theory, 408 Principle Component Analysis, 421
phase processivity of molecular motor, 446, 447
compensation, 42 production system, 415
curvature, 43, 46 programmable DNA linkers, 444
diagram, 225–227, 235, 412 Proper Orthogonal Decomposition, 421
bubble, 145, 189 prosodic features, 25
quasi 1-D salts, 317 protofilament, 438, 439, 441, 442
explosion, 228, 230–235, 237–239, 242, psychoacoustics, 37, 59
243, 246 pulse compression, 42, 43
locking, 62, 65
modulation, 274 quadripole, acoustic, 113
portrait, stroboscopic, 409, 410 quantum
randomization, 47 noise, 285
shifting, 263, 265, 266 well, 312
spatial, 265 wire, 312
temporal, 265 quasi-one-dimensional system, 315
spectrum, 38, 42 quasistatic squeezing, 205, 207, 209
synchronisation, 423, 425
transition, 217, 220, 222, 232, 234, Rössler system, 424
236, 237, 250, 312, 322 Rényi
ferroelectric, 327 dimension, 417, 418
first-order, 327 information, 417
kinetics, 224, 225 radiation impedance, 108
neutral-ionic, 326 rate constant, 376, 385
second-order, 325 Rayleigh
unwrapping model, 140
spatial, 263, 266 scattering, 238
temporal, 267, 274 wave, 300, 307
pinch-off of bubbles, 174 Rayleigh, Lord, 422
pinned-mode resonance, 318, 319, 321, 328 Rayleigh-Plesset model, 141, 165, 176
pitch perception, 39, 66 Rayleigh-Taylor instability, 179
plasma formation, 218, 249 reaction
plaster layer, 274 enthalpy, 377
plume scheme, isodesmic, 378, 386
dynamics, 217, 236–238, 240, 242, 249 recoil
Index 471
pressure, 234, 236, 238, 239 frequency, 281, 283, 287, 290, 291,
stress, 244–246, 248, 251 296
reconstruction of state space, 420, 421 interferometer, 279
rectified diffusion, 171, 173, 181–183, 188, active, 281, 283
189 saturation, dielectric, 349
reduced frequency, 391 SBSL – see: single bubble sonolumines-
regular zero crossings, 55 cence
relaxation scaling
function, 370 factor
Hill, 384 correction, 291, 295
time distribution, 348, 384 drift, 290
resolution of gyrosope, 284, 285 gyroscope, 282, 284, 287, 294
resonance function, 391
curve, 143, 406–408 model, dynamic, 391
frequency, 406, 407 Schawlow-Townes linewidth, 285
of bubble, 177 Schlieren technique, 237
harmonic, 143, 144, 146 Schroeder phase, 38
linear, 406, 407 secondary
nonlinear, 407, 408, 412 Bjerknes force, 185, 186, 190
of bubble, 143, 144, 177, 182, 186 cavitation, 150, 151
subharmonic, 143, 144 structure of biopolymers, 378
ultraharmonic, 143, 144 secure communication system, 425
resonator seeing, atmospheric, 123
cell, 372, 373 seismic signal detection, 300
measurement, ultrasonic, 343 seismology, 279, 284, 287, 299
response self-assembling structure, 441, 442
curve of bubble, 143–145 self-focussing, 150
giant, 144, 145 self-organization, 367
restoration of art, 259 self-similarity, 409, 411
reverberation, 117 semiconductor laser, 405, 413, 414
Reynolds number, 126, 188 coupled, 426
ring laser, 279, 295, 304 synchronisation, 426
cavity, 281, 295 sensitive dependence on initial conditions,
orientation, 293, 296 405, 419
ring vortex formation, 240, 249 shape stability of bubble, 171, 173, 178,
room 186, 188
acoustics, subjective, 37 shear elastic modulus, 438, 453, 454, 458
reverberation, 117 shedding of microbubbles, 163, 180, 191
rotation shielding, optical, 248, 249, 251
earth, 279, 280 shimmer, 26, 27, 31
frequency, 424 shock front rise time, 203, 211
measurement, 279 shock wave, 139, 146, 148, 152, 236–238,
sensor, 279, 300 240, 245
rotational collapse, 154, 155
isomerisation, 380 generation, 200
seismology, 299 generator
electrohydraulic, 201
saddle-node bifurcation, 408 electromagnetic, 202
Sagnac piezoelectric, 201
effect, 279, 280 internal, 156, 165, 241
472 Index
laser-induced bubble, 152 spontaneous, 26

lithotripsy – see: lithotripsy speech/nonspeech distinction, 25
pressure, 153, 241 sphericty of bubble, 156, 161, 162
secondary, 205 spillover problem, 120
torus, 150 spin
short-range order, 367 chain, 314, 315
short-time spectrum, 39 density wave, 315, 317
single ladder, 314
bubble, 139 wave, 328
sonoluminescence, 146, 153, 158, 162, spin-Peierls order, 317, 326
165, 168, 178, 182, 184 spinodal
molecule curve, 225–227
experiments, 435, 436 decomposition, 228–230
fluorescence, 445, 449 kinetic, 230
real-time observation, 436 limit, 228, 229, 233–236, 239, 244
particle gap, 318–321 temperature, 226, 228, 229, 235, 239
singular-value decomposition, 421 spiral wave, 429, 430
soft splitting of bubble, 189, 191
condensed matter, 435 spontaneous nucleation, 173
material, 437 squeezing
tissue, 217, 218 mechanism, 200, 210
solid-state laser, 405 model, 206
sonochemiluminescence, 192 quasistatic, 205, 207, 209
sonochemistry, 168, 172 stabilisation of laser, 428
sonoluminescence, 155, 205 stability of gyrosope, 282
single bubble, 146, 153, 158, 162, 165, stacks, 368, 378
168, 178, 182, 184 stand-off parameter, 149
sonotrode, 180, 187, 193, 194 state space reconstruction, 420, 421
sound static
control, 107 Blake threshold, 176, 177
velocity permittivity, 349
dispersion, 374 statistical physics, 435
spectrum, 375 stepwise dissociation, 368
spalling, 205, 210 steric depletion, 455
sparc gap, 201 Stokes flow, 453
spatio-temporal chaos, 429 stone
speaker normalization, 25 cleavage, 205, 207
speckle deterioration, 268
intensity correlation, 260 erosion, crater-like, 203, 205, 210
metrology, 259 fragmentation, 199, 203
spectrometry storm “Kyrill”, 299
acoustical, 368, 371 strain rate of tissue, 220, 233
dielectric, 339, 340 streamer of bubbles, 174, 175, 191, 192
ultrasonic, 338 stress
spectrum confinement, 223, 234–236, 243, 251
broadband, 409 tensile, 224, 233–235, 247, 248
sound velocity, 375 thermoelastic, 223, 224, 236, 245
speech von Mises, 443
recognition, 25 wave, thermoelastic, 225, 234
running, 25, 26, 29, 31, 34 stroboscopic phase portrait, 409, 410
Index 473
structural strength of tissue, 220, 232–234, 239,

control, 124 247, 250
vibration, 120 stress, 224, 233–235, 247, 248
structure wave, 203
formation of bubbles, 169, 171, 173, terracotta
190, 191 sample, 271, 272
microheterogeneous, 387 warriors of Lin Tong, 268
structure-borne sound, 121, 122 Teubner-Kahlweit model, 387
subcooled vapour, 226 thermal
subharmonic confinement, 223, 248, 251
oscillations, 409 denaturation, 222, 239, 244
resonance, 143, 144 diffusion, 223
subjective room acoustics, 37 dissociation, 222, 233, 234, 238
superconductivity, 315, 318 thermoelastic stress, 223, 224, 236, 245
superconductor, 314, 317 wave, 225, 234
superheated liquid, 226, 228, 230, 231 three-bead assay, 447, 448
superprecipitation, 457 threshold of cavitation, 173
surface THz spectroscopy, 319, 320, 322
instability, 145, 148, 162, 174, 178, tilt-over mode, 297
189, 191, 194 time delay autosynchronisation, 427
mode, 179 time series analysis, 406, 419, 420, 425
vaporization, 227, 230, 231, 234 time-average ESPI, 273
surfactant, 381 time-resolved photography, 237, 242
ionic, 382 tissue
nonionic, 382 ablation, 217, 223, 232
swarm, 429 biological, 217, 218
switching coagulation, 217
chaotic, 416 damage, 248
process, 415 matrix, 217, 232–234, 238, 240
rules, 415 matrix-continuous, 218
symmetry breaking, 311, 317, 328 mechanical properties, 220
symmetry-breaking bifurcation, 409 optical absorption, 218, 219
synchronisation, 405, 422, 423 strain rate, 220, 233
generalised, 426 tearing, 247
identical, 425, 426 TMTSF, 315, 323
parameter estimation, 426 TMTTF, 315, 316, 325
partial, 425 torsion number, 143
periodic oscillations, 423 torus
phase, 423, 425 bubble, 150, 154, 155
semiconductor lasers, 426 shock wave, 150
synchrophasing, 118 traffic noise, 118
system transfer function, 32
hybrid, 406, 415 transformer noise, 119
production, 415 transition metal oxide, 314
transposed stimuli, 62
Taken’s Theorem, 420 tripole, acoustic, 109
tank system, 416 TSTOOL, 419, 420
temperature, spinodal, 226, 228, 229, 235, TTF-CA, 316
239 turbulent flow, 111, 126
tensile two-phase fluid, 171, 173
474 Index
ultraharmonic resonance, 143, 144 data bank, 26

ultrashort laser pulses, 236 disorders, 26
ultrasonic normal, 28
absorption pathologic, 25
coefficient, 341 quality, 26, 31
spectra, 333 voiced sounds, 29
cleaning, 148, 168, 172 voiced/unvoiced classification, 30, 31
degassing, 183 volumetric process, 227, 228, 231, 234, 239
horn, 172, 193 von Mises stress, 443
resonator measurement, 343 vortex ring, 150, 453
spectrometry, 338 vowels, stationary, 26, 29, 31
transducer, 146, 172, 180, 193
unifying model, 388, 389 Wartburg castle, 263, 265
unstable periodic orbit, 427 water, 367
dielectric relaxation, 346
van der Pol, B., 423 optical absorption, 220, 221
van der Waals gas, 141 optical penetration depth, 221
vaporization wave
at surface, 227, 230, 231, 234 evanescent, 436
explosive, 238 spiral, 429, 430
temperature, 227 waveform synthesis, 114, 115
vapour whiskers, metallic, 314
bubble, 228 wormlike micelle, 454
cavitation, 175
dissociation, 165 Zerodur, 282–284, 304
explosion, 233, 238 Zinc(II)chloride complexation, 354
plume, 244
trapping, 165, 167
variable-path-length cell, 373
vesicle, 446
vibration
control, 107, 119
ESPI, 273
isolation, 121
of buildings, 122
video
high-speed, 33
holography, 262, 263
recordings, 26, 33
stroboscopic, 33
viral capsid, 441, 443
virtual mass, 183, 187
viscoelastic material, 437, 453
viscosity, volume, 369
viscous drag, 173, 183, 187, 188
vocal
folds, 31, 33
tract, 25, 32
voice
aphonic, 28
A broad variety of research topics emerged during the past sixty years from

the institute’s global theme „oscillations and waves“. Some of these to- Thomas Kurz, Ulrich Parlitz, and Udo Kaatze (Eds.)
pics are addressed in this book in which topical review articles by former and
present members of the institute are collected. The subjects covered vary from
speech and hearing research to flow control and active control systems, from
bubble oscillations to cavitation structures, from ordering phenomena in li-
quids and one-dimensional solids to complex dynamics of chaotic nonlinear Sixty Years Drittes Physikalisches Institut
systems, from laser speckle metrology to ring laser gyroscopes, from biophy-
sics to medical applications in ophthalmology as well as extracorporeal shock
A Festschrift
wave lithotripsy.
ISBN-13: 978-3-938616-96-3 Universitätsverlag Göttingen Universitätsverlag Göttingen

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A broad variety of research topics emerged during the past sixty years from

Oscillations, Waves, and Interactions

Thomas Kurz, Ulrich Parlitz, and Udo Kaatze (Eds.)

ISBN-13: 978-3-938616-96-3 Universitätsverlag Göttingen Universitätsverlag Göttingen

Except where otherwise noted, this work is

Oscillations, Waves and

Sixty Years Drittes

Address of the Editors

Typesetting in LaTeX: Thomas Kurz

© 2007 Universitätsverlag Göttingen

Applied physics at the “Dritte”

Speech research with physical methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

On the use of specific signal types in hearing research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Sound absorption, sound amplification,

Active control of sound and vibration

The single bubble – a hot microlaboratory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

From a single bubble to bubble structures in acoustic cavitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

Physics of stone fragmentation and new concept

Phase transitions, material ejection, and plume dynamics

Laser speckle metrology – a tool

High-resolution Sagnac interferometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

Charge-ordering phenomena in one-dimensional solids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

Multistep association of cations and anions.

Liquids: Formation of complexes and complex dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367

Complex dynamics of nonlinear systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405

DPI60plus – a future with biophysics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435

Göttingen, September 2007

Applied physics at the “Dritte”

Institut für Angewandte Elektrizität – the “Red House” on Bunsenstraße.

Göttingen distinguished itself not only in fundamental research in room acoustics,

“Free-space” room with Frieder Eggers (cello), Wolfgang Westphal (flute)

impulse response of a room using so-called maximum-length sequences constructed

3 Speech and hearing

5 Flow acoustics and flow control

Sound propagation through ducts is influenced by superimposed fluid flow. These

Anechoic water tank lined with rip-type absorbers.

Sound absorption and sound velocity in water, aqueous solutions of electrolytes,

Drittes Physikalisches Institut at the turn of the millenium.

nomena using ultrasound were immediately developed in Göttingen [87]. A cinemato-

8 Optics and Holography

Common photographic techniques and high-speed cinematography are rather limited

Lectures in all fields of vibrations and waves, usually supplemented by

11 Hypersonic spectroscopy of solids

12 Organic conductors and deformed semiconductors

Biologically inspired or medically motivated topics were considered by several groups

permanent damage to the cell, a process called sonoporation. Molecular uptake

[9] K. H. Kuttruff and R. Thiele, ‘Über die Frequenzabhängigkeit des Schalldrucks in

[31] H. W. Strube, ‘Speech research with physical methods’, in Oscillations, Waves,

verkehr)’, Physik in unserer Zeit 20, 82 (1989).

[73] F. Mechel and P. Wille, ‘Experimentelle Untersuchungen aspektunabhängiger Sonar-

[98] W. Lauterborn and E. Cramer, ‘Subharmonic Route to Chaos Observed in Acoustics’,

[120] C. Scheffczyk, U. Parlitz, T. Kurz, W. Knop, and W. Lauterborn, ‘Comparison of

[144] R. Pottel and A. Wülfing, ‘Messungen der komplexen Dielektrizitätskonstante

[164] P. Polanowski, J. Ulanski, R. Wojciechowski, A. Tracz, J. K. Jeszka, S. Matejcek,

of microbubbles and boundaries’, Phys. Fluids 15, 2916 (2003).

Photograph “Free-space” room: LIFE, International Edition, May 31, 1954.

Speech research with physical methods

• Work related to speech recognition.

• Acoustic analysis of pathologic voices, extended to running speech.