James, I am assuming that your question is motivated by the controveral Papp claims. While I have not had time to do more than peruse the following speculative papers, perhaps they are relevant, but I am not sure they are correct.
"Ion trapping and sonoluminescence" ABSTRACT: Sonoluminescence is the intriguing phenomenon of strong light flashes from tiny bubbles in a liquid. The bubbles are driven by an ultrasonic wave and need to be filled with noble gas atoms (c.f. Fig. 1). Approximating the emitted light by blackbody radiation indicates very high temperatures. Although sonoluminescence has been studied extensively, the origin of the sudden energy concentration within the bubble collapse phase is still controversial" (p.21) http://www.sussex.ac.uk/physics/iqt/ECTI/index_files/Booklet3.pdf "Composite quantum systems and environment-induced heating" Abstract. In recent years, much attention has been paid to the development of techniques which transfer trapped particles to very low temperatures. Here we focus our attention on a heating mechanism which contributes to the finite temperature limit in laser sideband cooling experiments with trapped ions. It is emphasized that similar heating processes might be present in a variety of composite quantum systems whose components couple individually to different environments. For example, quantum optical heating effects might contribute significantly to the very high temperatures which occur during the collapse phase in sonoluminescence experiments. It might even be possible to design composite quantum systems, like atom-cavity systems, such that they continuously emit photons even in the absence of external driving." http://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.1551.pdf "Quantum Optical Heating in Sonoluminescence Experiments" http://arxiv.org/pdf/0904.1121 "Sonoluminescence and quantum optical heating" http://arxiv.org/pdf/0904.0885 "ENVIRONMENT-INDUCED HEATING IN SONOLUMINESCENCE EXPERIMENTS" http://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.7022.pdf "Energy concentration in composite quantum systems" http://arxiv.org/pdf/0909.5337 -- Lou Pagnucco James Bowery wrote: > Let's say you've got a xenon atom. It likes to absorb energy and emit > photons. You know, xenon lamps etc. > > OK, so lets ask a real simple question: > > When a tube filled with xenon gas has some energy pumped into it and the > electrons go to higher orbitals -- yes this happens for a very short > period > of time before photons are emitted but let's talk about just the short > period of time. The diameter of the atoms presumably increases. Does the > gas pressure increase during that interval? > > Now lets say that the energy is sufficient to actually strip the electrons > away and form an ionized gas for a short interval. Does the ionized gas > pressure increase during that interval? > > Now lets talk about really-simple magnetic confinement (say a magnetic > mirror <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_mirror> type bottle) used in > conjunction with a solid tube so that the non-conducting (because > non-ionized) gas phase is confined by the solid tube and the conducting > (because) ionized gas phase is confined by the magnetic bottle: > > When the electrons fall back into their ground states we can comfortably > assert that the photons emitted will equal the energy input. However, > what > if the plasma has expanded during the high pressure phase, ie: done work > against the magnetic confinement (like, oh, I don't know, generating an > electrical power spike in a conductor associated with the magnetic field). > Does that mean the "free" electrons of the plasma no longer want to > return > to their ground states and give up exactly the same amount of energy that > they would have in the absence of having done work? If not, where did the > electrons go and where do the xenon atoms get electrons to substitute for > them? >
