Rice and barley lasers infused with organic dye

Abstract

Attractive experimental investigations are currently reported on laser action from optically pumped bulk solution and liquid microdroplets of high-gain dye containing strongly scattering nanoparticles. The mechanism is considered due to multiple light scattering in a strongly scattering and diffusive medium that can trap pump photons as well as emitted photons to provide dispersive random feedback in a small spatial region to exceed the gain over loss for lasing action. Based on the experiment of Lawandy's group, lasing studies of dye-infused animal tissues were performed, because biological tissues have intrinsically scattering, i.e., heterogeneous and continuously disordered properties. However, they merely observed spectral narrowing by scattering-enhanced amplification of spontaneous emission. The paper reports what is to our best knowledge the first experimental result of plant lasers using rice and barley. We could observe the lasing threshold together with spectral narrowing in their outputs.