Electrically Controlled Plasmonic Lasing Resonances with Silver Nanoparticles Embedded in Amplifying Nematic Liquid Crystals

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates electrically controlled coherent random lasing using silver nanoparticles in dye-doped nematic liquid crystals, revealing how electric fields influence emission intensity, frequency-splitting, and the lasing mechanism through plasmonic effects and host medium fluctuations.

Contribution

It introduces a modified rate equation model explaining the lasing mechanism involving plasmon-polariton enhancements and host fluctuations, advancing understanding of electrically tunable plasmonic lasing in liquid crystal hosts.

Findings

Electric field modulates emission intensity and frequency-splitting.

Lasing resonances are sensitive to dielectric perturbations and host fluctuations.

Dynamic light scattering causes quenching of lasing resonances in weak fields.

Abstract

We demonstrate an electrically controlled coherent random lasing with silver nano-particles dispersed in a dye-doped nematic liquid crystal (NLC), in which external electric field dependent emission intensity and frequency-splitting are recorded. A modified rate equation model is proposed to interpret the observed coherent lasing, which is a manifestation of double enhancements, caused by the plasmon-polariton near-fields of Ag particles, on the population inversion of laser dye molecules and the optical energy density of lasing modes. The noticeable quenching of lasing resonances in a weak applied field is due to the dynamic light scattering by irregular director fluctuations of the NLC host, which wash out the coherent interference among different particle palsmon-polariton fields. This provides a proof to support that the present lasing resonances are very sensitive to the dielectric perturbations in the host medium and thus are likely associated with some coupled plasmonic oscillations of metal nanoparticles.