title: Plasma characteristics of the discharge produced during mechanoluminescence.
abstract: The conditions during light emission from the fracture of solids have been difficult to determine because such mechanoluminescence (ML) is usually weak. When ML is produced by acoustic cavitation of a liquid slurry of resorcinol crystals, however, we observe bright light emission, which makes it possible to measure plasma conditions by emission spectra: a bimodal heavy atom emission temperature profile is observed with 405+/-22 K (for 80% of emitting CH) and 4015+/-730 K (for 20%), with an electron density and energy of 1.3+/-0.13x10;{14} cm;{-3} and approximately 3.5 eV (i.e., an effective T_{e} approximately 41 000 K).
authors.affiliation: School of Chemical Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
authors.forename: Nathan C
authors.initials: NC
authors.lastname: Eddingsaas
authors.forename: Kenneth S
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Suslick