36‐1: Invited Paper: Liquid‐Crystal Lasers: Recent Advances and Future Opportunities

Abstract

Liquid crystal (LC) lasers use a layer of chiral nematic liquid crystal to form a self‐organising resonant cavity. When doped with fluorescent dye and suitably excited, they form versatile micro‐lasers with high efficiencies, low thresholds, and selective wavelength emission across a continuous range of the visible spectrum. This, combined with their scalable fabrication, makes them attractive candidates for a wide variety of photonic applications, including laser displays. This paper includes a review of the principles of operation, of recent enhancements that are advancing the technology closer to market, and concludes with demonstrations of LC lasers used for medical imaging and low‐speckle holography.

Liquid crystal lasers: potential light source for holographic imaging

“…In contrast, the largest CNR can be measured in this work is from LC laser C, reaching the value of 14.5. The less speckle of the LC lasers is supposed to be one of the reason for the high CNR 16 . With the lower speckle contrast and the higher contrast to noise ratio, as well as the narrow line width (high monochromaticity), LC lasers are more suitable than the conventional lasers for the applications of holographic imaging.…”