  We report on the evaporation of hexane from porous alumina and silicon
membranes. These membranes contain billions of independent nanopores tailored
to an ink-bottle shape, where a cavity several tens of nanometers in diameter
is separated from the bulk vapor by a constriction. For alumina membranes with
narrow enough constrictions, we demonstrate that cavity evaporation proceeds by
cavitation. Measurements of the pressure dependence of the cavitation rate
follow the predictions of the bulk, homogeneous, classical nucleation theory,
definitively establishing the relevance of homogeneous cavitation as an
evaporation mechanism in mesoporous materials. Our results imply that porous
alumina membranes are a promising new system to study liquids in a deeply
metastable state.
