We propose a robust method to suppress laser speckle using a polymer-stabilized liquid crystal (PSLC) device with high initial transmittance. With applied voltage, a large modulation depth has been produced through light scattering because of the refractive index mismatch between the rotated nematic liquid crystals and the polymer networks. By using PSLCs with 5 wt % monomer, a speckle noise reduction rate of approximately 54.7% can be achieved with an applied voltage of 6 V. The lowest speckle contrast of approximately 0.025 with relatively high discrimination from the projected AF image has also been demonstrated through a wedge PSLC cell.

The experimental detail of a random lasing action from dye-doped nematic liquid crystals (LCs) inside single-core capillaries with a core diameter below 50 m was investigated. The resonant characteristics, including the number of emission spikes, the full width at half maximum (FWHM), and the estimated Q-factor, were shown to depend on the core diameter of a capillary. In contrast with a capillary with a larger core diameter and having various emission spikes, only three emission spikes were excited from a capillary with a 10-m core diameter, owing to the smaller effective area of the pump beam. However, the decrease in the amplitude of emission spikes and the broadening of the linewidth accompanying the higher lasing threshold from a capillary with a 50-m core diameter are attributed to the decrease in the pump fluence and the increase in the scattering loss, respectively. In this paper, a random laser (RL) with the shortest FWHM emission peak of about 0.47 nm and the highest Q-factor of about 1268 was generated from the capillary with a 20-m core diameter. By means of temperature adjustment, the emission spectra of the RL that is related to the birefringence and alignment ordering of the LC molecules inside a capillary with a 20-m core diameter can be effectively altered. Our experiments show that the RL, revealing adjustable output emission spectra, can be a promising device in using remote sensing applications.

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We investigated the characteristics of noise-like pulses (NLPs) from a net normal dispersion Yb-doped fiber laser (YDFL) by using the grating pairs (GPs) inside the laser cavity as a dispersion compensation element. Without the insertion of the slit inside the laser cavity, the operation of the YDFL is at an NLP state with the double-scale intensity autocorrelation trace once the mode-locked pulses are generated. Through the dispersion delay line outside the laser cavity, the substantial temporal compression of the NLPs has been demonstrated. After inserting the slit between the GPs as a bandpass filter, the operation state of the YDFL can be switched between the NLPs and the dissipated solitons by means of a pump power. Besides, the NLPs can also transit to the bound solitons as the YDFL is operated within long and short wavelength regimes through the spatial shift of the slit.

Plasmonic random lasers have been demonstrated in combining dye-doped cholesteric liquid crystals (DD-CLCs) and silver nanoparticles (AgNPs). The DD-CLC laser reveals the lowest threshold and highest slope efficiency through the localized surface plasmon resonance of AgNPs with the best coupling of the emission spectrum of lasing dye and resonance of electron oscillation on the metal surface. Thermal control of the DD-CLC lasers has been achieved to simultaneously shift the long- and short-edge lasing peaks. By the α -stable analysis, the DD-CLC random laser (RL) reveals heavy tail distribution with relatively low α ∼ 1.06 to show the Lévy behavior. Owing to its low spatial coherence, the DD-CLC RL has been demonstrated to produce a speckle-reduced image with a lower contrast of about 0.04.