Technology.org October 26, 2018
An international team of researchers (Finland, Italy, UK, USA – Case Western University) has demonstrated that can are able to control the direction of a laser’s output beam by applying external voltage. They combined solitons and collinear pumping in weakly scattering dye-doped nematic liquid crystals, whereby random lasing and self-confinement concur to beaming the emission. The advantages are: all-optical switching driven by a low-power input, laser directionality and smooth output profile with high-conversion efficiency, externally controlled angular steering. Such effects make soliton-assisted random lasers an outstanding route towards application-oriented random lasers. This could lead to a medical procedure being conducted more accurately and less invasively or re-routing a fiber-optic communication line with the flip of a dial… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Configuration and basic features of nematicon-assisted random laser. Credit: Nature Communications, volume 9, Article number: 3863 (2018)