Molecular Crystals and Liquid Crystals, Vol.516, 190-196, 2010
Lasing Stability Enhancement in Dye Doped Cholesteric Liquid Crystals
Lasing from dye doped cholesteric liquid crystal mixture was experimentally observed several years ago but in despite of all the efforts that have been done so far mirror less liquid crystals lasers are not yet suitable for practical applications. The main issues that have still to be addressed concern the efficiency, the stability and the tunability of the laser emission. This work has been aimed to obtain an improvement in lasing stability from dye doped chiral mixtures confined in glass cells. Stability problems are mainly related to the absorption of the powerful pumping beam from the mixture that leads to a deformation of the cholesteric texture and a bleaching of the dye. To solve these problems we have investigated different surface coatings and new system configurations.