Importance of dye host on absorption, propagation losses, and amplified spontaneous emission for dye-doped polymer thin films.

The absorption spectra of dye-doped polymer thin films made from a variety of five dyes and six matrices, either organic or organomineral, are analyzed to evaluate the residual absorption in the red wavelength tail and in particular at amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) wavelengths. An absorption cutoff wavelength is defined as the extrapolated wavelength at which the absorption losses are expected to become negligible compared to the structure losses. Such absorption-spectrum-extrapolated wavelengths are compared to the ASE wavelengths and found to correlate for most of the dye-matrix couples. The propagation losses of PM597-doped organic polymers are also measured and accordingly found to increase with the glass transition temperature of the host matrix.