We investigate the radial thermocapillary flow driven by a laser-heated microbead in partial wetting at the water-air interface. Particular attention is paid to the evolution of the convective flow patterns surrounding the hot sphere as the latter is increasingly heated. The flow morphology is nearly axisymmetric at low laser power P. Increasing P leads to symmetry breaking with the onset of counter-rotating vortex pairs. The boundary condition at the interface, close to no-slip in the low-P regime, turns about stress-free between the vortex pairs in the high-P regime. These observations strongly support the view that surface-active impurities are inevitably adsorbed on the water surface where they form an elastic layer. The onset of vortex pairs is the signature of a hydrodynamic instability in the layer response to the centrifugal forced flow. Interestingly, our study paves the way for the design of active colloids able to achieve high-speed self-propulsion via vortex pair generation at a liquid interface.
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