Untersuchungen zur laserinduzierten Kavitation mit Nanosekunden und Femtosekundenlasern The optical breakdown in the focus of a strong laser pulse can rupture liquids. A bubble is formed which can serve as a well reproducible model for the investigation of cavitation mechanisms.In this work the properties of such laser generated cavitation bubbles are investigated experimentally. It concentrates on bubbles induced by femtosecond laser pulses. The high intensities of these laser pulses lead to a nonlinear response of the liquid. Due to self focusing the diffraction limited focus known from linear optics is substituted by an elongated channel. This channel determines the geometry of the optical breakdown and the resulting bubble. While the initial bubbles are approximately elliptical in shape they develop a complex dynamics within a few microseconds