Within an Anglo-Dutch research collaboration, we discovered that certain types of laser designs output fractal light patterns. This work concerns fractal formation in linear systems, and is quite distinct from our later studies predicting the emergence of spontaneous patterns in nonlinear systems.
Research team demonstrates fractal light from lasers
Reporting this month in Physical Review A, the team provides the first experimental evidence for fractal light from simple lasers and adds a new prediction: that the fractal pattern should exist in 3-D and not just 2-D, as previously thought.