Spontaneous optical fractal pattern formation

We report, for the first time, spontaneous nonlinear optical spatial fractals. The proposed genericmechanism employs intrinsic nonlinear dynamics both to generate an initial pattern seed and to fill outstructure across decades of spatial scale. We demonstrate this in one of the simplest of nonlinear opticalsystems, composed of a Kerr slice and a single-feedback mirror. In this case, the smallest pattern scales arelimited by either the optical wavelength or the diffusion length of the medium photoexcitation. Thedimension characteristics of these particular fractals are also derived