A temperature-tunable random laser

Abstract

Random lasers have fascinating emission properties that lie somewhere between those of a conventional laser and a common light-bulb. We have created a random laser that can be brought above and below its threshold for laser emission by small changes in its temperature, thereby creating a light source with a temperature-tunable colour spectrum. As a single random laser can be made as small as a grain of tens of micrometres in diameter, we expect our device to find application in photonics, temperature-sensitive displays and screens, and in remote temperature sensing. Lasers are now commonplace - for example, they are used in industry and in hospitals, in bar-code scanners and compact-disc players. Conventional lasers are based on an optically active material and some sort of laser cavity that traps light for long enough for laser action to occur. A new type of laser source, known as a random laser, has been discovered that does not require a regular cavity but instead depends on a diffusive material such as a fine powder. In a random laser, light waves are trapped by multiple light scattering (that is, light diffusion), which takes over the role of the cavity in a regular laser (Fig. 1). The emission of a random-laser source has a well defined colour spectrum and can be pulsed, just like a regular laser, although its emission is in several directions because of the intrinsic randomness of the system.