Two-photon lasing of dye-doped photonic crystal lasers

We report two-photon pump lasing action of a photonic crystal laser, which comprises fluorescent dye-doped chiral nematic liquid crystals. The dye absorbs light peaking at 466 nm, while the pumping was conducted at 1000 nm wavelength. Due to redistribution of density of states by a stopping band, a strong single-mode stimulated emission was observed at the band edge wavelength of 608 nm with 1 nm detection-limited linewidth. A comparative study shows that under an identical pumping geometry, the two-photon lasing threshold is only 120 times larger than that for the single-photon excitation, a ratio lower than those generally reported for up-conversion lasing. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.