Characterization of periodic cavitation in optical tweezers.

Microscopic vapor explosions or cavitation bubbles can be generated repeatedly in optical tweezers with a microparticle that partially absorbs at the trapping laser wavelength. In this work we measure the size distribution and the production rate of cavitation bubbles for microparticles with a diameter of 3 μm using high-speed video recording and a fast photodiode. We find that there is a lower bound for the maximum bubble radius R(max)∼2  μm which can be explained in terms of the microparticle size.