Second-Order Light Scattering and Local Anisotropy of Diffusion-Limited Aggregates and Bond-Percolation Clusters

Abstract

Though having similar fractal dimensionality ($D\approx 2.5$), diffusion-limited aggregates and bondpercolation clusters are shown to have quite different second-order light scattering (SOLS) behaviors. The SOLS intensities scale as power of the fractal mass, $I^{\mathrm{}\left(2\right)\mathrm{}}\propto N^x$, with $x$ equal to ≈ 1.1 for diffusion-limited aggregates and ≈ 1.5 for bond-percolation clusters. This difference arises from the contribution of three- and four-body correlations. Thus it is suggested that SOLS can be used to reveal new structural information about fractals and to differentiate between them when they obey the same mass-size relations.