Optical supercavitation in soft-matter

Nonlinear optical propagation in complex fluids is in many respect un-explored. Here the authors consider the non linear optical propagation of a micron-sized focused beam in a dye-doped, strongly absorbing, out-of-equilibrium nanoscale colloid, which undergoes a dynamical arrest, i.e., a liquid-gel transition. The authors show that the system behaviour changes from being strongly absorbitive, to a regime that allows beam propagation. This is accompanied by a shock-wave-front in the material that forms a depletion region of the absorbing molecules.