Abstract

Band-edge liquid crystal lasers are of interest for a number of applications including laser projection displays. Herein, we demonstrate simultaneous red-green-blue lasing from a single liquid crystal sample by creating a two-dimensional laser array fabricated from dye-doped chiral nematic liquid crystals. By forming a pitch gradient across the cell, and optically pumping the sample using a lenslet array, a polychromatic laser array can be observed consisting simultaneously of red-green-blue colors. Specifically, the two-dimensional polychromatic array could be used to produce a laser-based display, with low speckle and wide color gamut, whereby no complex fabrication procedure is required to generate the individual ‘pixels’.

© 2008 Optical Society of America

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History
Original Manuscript: September 26, 2008
Manuscript Accepted: October 29, 2008
Revised Manuscript: October 28, 2008
Published: October 30, 2008

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Author Affiliations

Stephen M. Morris, Philip J. Hands, Sonja Findeisen-Tandel, Robert H. Cole, Timothy D. Wilkinson, Harry J. Coles

University of Cambridge

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