THE DECAY OF BUBBLE OSCILLATIONS

We study the initial value problem posed by the small amplitude free o scillations of a bubble in a viscous fluid. The solution consists of a linear combination of discrete normal modes and an integral over a co ntinuous spectrum. The continuous spectrum dominates the solution for large times. As a result, the surface deformation ultimately decays al gebraically and not as a modulated damped wave, as has sometimes been suggested. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics. [S1070-6631(98)0171 2-7].