ORGANIC LASERS

F. J. Duarte et al.,Organic Lasers and Organic Photonics (Institute of Physics, London, 2018).

SOLID STATE ORGANIC DYE LASER FOR STUDENTS (0:20)

This is a brief guide to the literature of the organic laser or organic lasers. The papers and books included refer to organic gain media as well as narrow-linewidth tunable laser oscillators engineered with organic gain media.

Books on Liquid and/or Fluid Organic Lasers

F. J. Duarte and L. W. Hillman (Eds.), Dye Laser Principles (Academic, New York, 1990).
F. P. Schäfer (Ed.), Dye Lasers, 3rd Ed. (Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1990).
F. J. Duarte (Ed.), High Power Dye Lasers (Springer-Verlag, Berlin,1991).
F. J. Duarte (Ed.), Selected Papers on Dye Lasers (SPIE, Bellingham Wa, 1992).
F. J. Duarte (Ed.), Tunable Lasers Handbook (Academic, New York, 1995).

Books on Solid-State Organic Lasers

F. J. Duarte (Ed.), Tunable Lasers Handbook (Academic, New York, 1995).
F. J. Duarte, Tunable Laser Optics (Elsevier Academic, New York, 2003).
F. J. Duarte (Ed.), Tunable Laser Applications, 2nd Ed. (CRC, New York, 2009).
F. J. Duarte, Tunable Laser Optics, 2nd Ed. (CRC, New York, 2015).
F. J. Duarte (Ed.), Tunable Laser Applications, 3rd Ed. (CRC, New York, 2016).

Organic Lasers History

P. P. Sorokin and J. R. Landkard, Stimulated emission observed from an organic dye, chloro-aluminum phthalocyanine, IBM. J. Res. Devel. 10, 162-163 (1966).
F. P. Schäfer, W. Schmidt, J. Volze, Organic dye solution laser, Appl. Phys. Lett. 9, 306-309 (1966).
F. J. Duarte, Organic dye lasers: brief history and recent developments, Optics and Photonics News 14 (10), 20-25 (2003).

High-Performance Narrow-Linewidth Solid-State Organic Lasers

These efficient and compact dispersive laser oscillators have been shown to yield beam divergences ~ 1.5 times the diffraction limit and single-longitudinal-mode emission at laser linewidths of ~ 350 MHz. Emission pulses are in the ns regime at peak powers in the kW range. Continuous tunability has been demonstrated in the 550-600 nm region.

In these solid-state tunable lasers the gain medium is an organic-dye-doped polymer matrix. Usually this matrix is a highly homogenous form of poly(methyl-methacrylate) (PMMA). An additional example of a polymer used as matrix in the gain media of a tunable polymer laser is HEMA:MMA.

F. J. Duarte, Solid-state multiple-prism grating dye laser oscillators, Appl. Opt. 33, 3857-3860 (1994).
F. J. Duarte, Solid-state dispersive dye laser oscillator: very compact cavity, Opt. Commun. 117, 480-484 (1995).
F. J. Duarte, Multiple-prism near-grazing-incidence grating solid-state dye laser oscillator, Opt. Laser Technol. 29, 513-516 (1997).
F. J. Duarte, T. S. Taylor, A. Costela, I. Garcia-Moreno, and R. Sastre, Long-pulse narrow-linewidth dispersive solid-state dye-laser oscillator, Appl. Opt. 37, 3987-3989 (1998).
F. J. Duarte, Multiple-prism grating solid-state dye laser oscillator: optimized architecture, Appl. Opt. 38, 6347-6349 (1999).
F. J. Duarte, Multiple-return-pass beam divergence and the linewidth equation, Appl. Opt. 40, 3038 - 3041 (2001).
F. J. Duarte, Tunable Laser Optics (Elsevier Academic, New York, 2003) Chapter 7.
F. J. Duarte ans R. O. James, in Tunable Laser Applications, 2nd Ed. (CRC, New York, 2009) Chapter 4.
F. J. Duarte, Tunable organic dye lasers: physics and technology of high-performance liquid and solid-state narrow-linewidth oscillators, Progress in Quantum Electronics 36, 29-50 (2012).

Solid-state organic laser incorporating a dye-doped-polymer gain medium in a multiple-prism near grazing-incidence grating oscillator configuration. This oscillator is excited longitudinally (from Duarte, 1997).

Highly Efficient Organic Lasers

Solid-State Dye Laser Oscillators

Distributed Feedback Solid-State Organic Lasers

W.J. Wadsworth et al., Efficient distributed feedback solid state dye laser with a dynamic grating, Appl. Phys. B 69, 163-165 (1999).
X. Zhu et al., Distributed-feedback dye-doped solgel silicate lasers, Appl. Opt. 39, 3104-3107 (2000).
Y. Oki et al., Long lifetime and high repetition rate operation from distributed feedback plastic waveguided dye lasers, Opt. Commun. 214, 277-283 (2002).
Y. Oki et al., Wide-wavelength range operation of a distributed-feedback dye laser with a plastic waveguide, Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 41, 6370-6374 (2002).
D. Gindre et al., Refractive-index saturation-mediated multiple line emission in polymer thin-film distributed- feedback lasers, Opt. Lett. 31, 1657-1659 (2006).
H. Watanabe et al., Picosecond-pulse-pumped distributed-feedback thick-film waveguide blue laser using fluorescent brightener 135, Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 48, 072105 (2010).

Recent Advances in Solid-State Organic Gain Media

F. J. Duarte and E. J. A. Pope, Optical inhomogeneities in sol-gel derived ORMOSILS and nanocomposites, Ceramic Transactions 55, 267-273 (1995).
A. Maslyukov et al., Solid state dye laser with modified poly(methyl methacrylate)-doped active elements, Appl. Opt. 34, 1516-1518 (1995).
R. Gvishi et al., New laser medium: dye-doped sol-gel fiber, Opt. Commun. 126, 66-72 (1996).
G. D. Peng et al., Broadband tunable optical amplification in rhodamine B-doped step-index polymer optical fibre, Opt. Commun. 129, 353-357 (1996).
W. Holzer et al., Photo-physical characterization of rhodamine 6 G in a 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate methyl methacrylate copolymer, Chem. Phys. 256, 125-136 (2000).
F. J. Duarte and R. O. James, Tunable solid-state lasers incorporating dye-doped polymer-nanoparticle gain media, Opt. Lett. 28, 2088-2090 (2003).
F. J. Duarte and R. O. James, Spatial structure of dye-doped polymer-nanoparticle laser media, Appl. Opt. 43, 4088-4090 (2004).
A. Costela el at., Silicon-containing organic matrices as hosts for highly photostable solid-state dye lasers, Appl. Phys. Lett. 85, 2160-2162 (2004).
H. Watanabe et al., Waveguide dye laser including a SiO₂ nanoparticle-dispersed random scattering active media, Appl. Phys. Lett. 86, 151123 (2005).
A. Costela el at., Highly photostable solid-state dye lasers based on silicon-modified organic matrices, J. Appl. Phys. 101, 073110 (2007).
O. García et al., Synthetic strategies for hybrid materials to improve properties for optoelectronicc applications, Adv. Funct. Mater. 18, 2017-2025 (2008).
F. J. Duarte and R. O. James, Tunable lasers based on dye-doped polymer gain media incorporating homogeneous distributions of functional nanoparticles, in Tunable Laser Applications, 2nd Ed. (CRC, New York, 2009) Chapter 4.
A. Costela, I. García-Moreno, L. Cerdan, V. Martín, O. García, and R. Sastre, Dye-doped POSS solutions: random nanomaterials for laser emission, Adv. Mat. 21, 1-4 (2009).
R. Sastre et al., Dye-doped polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS)-modified polymeric matrices for highly-efficient and photostable solid-state dye lasers, Adv. Funct. Mater. 19, 3307-3319 (2009).

Electrically Pumped, or Excited, Organic-Semiconductor Coherent Emission

Relevant Early Studies on Organic Amplified Spontaneous Emission (ASE)

B. Steyer and F. P. Schäfer, A vapor phase dye laser, opt. Commun. 10, 219-220 (1974).
G. Marowsky, F. P. Schäfer, J. W. Keto, and F. K. Tittel, Fluorescence studies of electron-beam pumped POPOV dye vapor, Appl. Phys. 9, 143-146 (1976).

Organic Coherent Emission Via Electrical Excitation

F. J. Duarte et al., Coherence characteristics of electrically excited tandem organic light-emitting diodes, Opt. Lett. 30, 3072-3074 (2005).
F. J. Duarte, Coherent electrically-excited organic semiconductors: visibility of interferograms and emission linewidth, Opt. Lett. 32, 412-414 (2007).
F. J. Duarte, Coherent electrically excited organic semiconductors: coherent or laser emission?, Appl. Phys. B 90, 101-108 (2008).

F. J. Duarte, Coherent electrically excited organic semiconductors, in Tunable Laser Applications, 2nd Ed. (CRC, New York, 2009) Chapter 14.

X. Liu et al., Microcavity organic laser device under electrical pumping, Opt. Lett. 34, 503-505 (2009) [Note: a commentary to this paper has been published by I. D. W. Samuel et al., Nat. Photon. 3, 546-549 (2009)].
F. J. Duarte, K. M. Vaeth, and L. S. Liao, Electrically excited organic light-emitting diodes with spatial and spectral coherence, US Patent 7667391 (2010).

Resources on Tunable Lasers and Coherent Sources of Radiation

Page published on the 11th of April, 2007; Updated on the 20th of July, 2019.