Enhanced emission from liquid-crystal lasers

The performance of a photonic band-edge laser fabricated from a low molar mass dye-doped chiral nematic liquid crystal is found to have a strong thermal dependence. At each temperature the performance of the laser has been characterized by the slope efficiency which was calculated from a plot of the emission energy as a function of excitation energy. This slope efficiency was found to increase by 36% when the dye-doped chiral nematic liquid crystal was cooled from 53 to 43 °C. The increase in slope efficiency is considered to be due to a change in the lasing conditions, in particular, changes in the emission efficiency of the dye and possibly the quality factor of the liquid-crystal resonator, which is dependent upon the linewidth of the resonant mode. The wavelength dependency of the spontaneous emission intensity and the quantum efficiency of the dye were not found to influence the lasing conditions in this case. The order parameters relating to the dye-doped chiral nematic liquid crystal were considered to be the principle factors responsible for the increase in performance at the lower operating temperature of 43 °C. © 2005 American Institute of Physics. [DOI: 10.1063/1.1829144]