Electrostrictive fluid pressure from a laser beam

Abstract

Recent times have seen surge of research activity on systems combining fluid mechanics and electromagnetic fields. In radiation optics, whenever information about the distribution of pressure in a dielectric fluid is required, the contribution from electrostriction becomes important. In the present paper we calculate how the local pressure varies with position and time when a laser beam is imposed in a uniform fluid. A Gaussian intensity profile of arbitrary time dependence is assumed for the beam, and general results are derived in this case. For demonstration we analyze two different cases: first, that the beam is imposed suddenly (mathematically in the form of a step function); secondly, that the beam is switched on in a soft way. In both cases, simple analytical expressions for the pressure distribution are found.

10 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in Physics of Fluids

References in corpus (2)

• Laser microfluidics: fluid actuation by light
• Nonlinear Laser-Induced Deformations of Liquid-Liquid Interfaces: an Optical Fiber Model

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Dielectric Fluid in Inhomogeneous Pulsed Electric Field
• Radiation Forces and the Abraham-Minkowski Problem
• Detection of the Abraham force with a succession of short optical pulses
• Theory of microdroplet and microbubble deformation by Gaussian laser beam
• Electrostrictive counter-force on fluid microdroplet in short laser pulse
• Microdroplet oscillations during optical pulling
• Laser induced ponderomotive convection in water
• On two optomechanical effects of laser-induced electrostriction in dielectric liquids
• Proposal to repeat the Abraham force experiment using giant permittivity materials