Laser beam filamentation in fractal aggregates

Abstract

We investigate filamentation of a cw laser beam in soft matter such as colloidal suspensions and fractal gels. The process, driven by electrostriction, is strongly affected by material properties, which are taken into account via the static structure factor, and have impact on the statistics of the light filaments.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. Revised version with corrected figure 5. To be published in Phys. Rev. Let