Interferometric study of selectively excited bubble capillary modes

We present an experimental study of capillary oscillations of a bubble of gas in water. The oscillations are detected by a very sensitive interferometric technique and the modes are excited by an electric field. We observe, and theoretically demonstrate, that by properly choosing the symmetry of the field we can selectively excite modes of different order. We have studied the dependence of the characteristic frequency of the breathing mode, of the quadrupolar mode and of the octupolar mode on the bubble size. Our results are in remarkable agreement with the results of the current linearized hydrodynamic description of the bubble modes