Low threshold lasing from dye-doped cholesteric liquid crystal multi-layered structures

We fabricated novel hybrid structures composed of a dye-doped low-molecular-weight cholesteric liquid crystal sandwiched by multilayered polymer cholesteric liquid crystal films and evaluated their lasing characteristics. Lasing was observed with an extremely reduced threshold (12 nJ/pulse) by a factor of 10 compared with that in a simple dye-doped low-molecular-weight cholesteric liquid crystal cell. Lasing characteristics experimentally obtained were discussed by comparing them with the simulated photonic density of states spectra. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America