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Physical Review A

Excitation-dependent diffuse super-reflection from a random laser

Ravitej Uppu, Sushil A. Mujumdar

Published May 13, 2015• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Enhancement of the diffusive albedo from a random amplifying medium is discussed. A pump-probe setup is used to study the amplification of the reflected probe pulse light outside the backscattering cone. Strong super-reflection is measured and its dependence on the disorder strength is studied. An optimal disorder strength is observed at high excitation energy wherein the super-reflection is maximal. The origins of this behavior are traced to the interplay between the out-coupling and amplification from a disordered amplifying medium with an inhomogeneous distribution of gain.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.91.053819

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Enhancement of the diffusive albedo from a random amplifying medium is discussed. A pump-probe setup is used to study the amplification of the reflected probe pulse light outside the backscattering cone. Strong super-reflection is measured and its dependence on the disorder strength is studied. An optimal disorder strength is observed at high excitation energy wherein the super-reflection is maximal. The origins of this behavior are traced to the interplay between the out-coupling and amplification from a disordered amplifying medium with an inhomogeneous distribution of gain.
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We investigated random scattering of light in a disorder gain medium of ZnO powder using the pump-probe technique. Using a probe beam at (lambda) =390nm, the width ((theta) ) of the coherent backscattering peak from the ZnO powder is measured to be ~7.5 degree(s), thus the coherent scattering length l is approximately 1.2(lambda) ((theta) =(lambda) /2(pi) l) which is close to the strong scattering regime. When a pump beam ((lambda) =267nm) exceeds a certain excitation threshold, supernarrow emission peaks (bandwidth less than 1nm) emerged from the ZnO broad photoluminescence background. Concurrently, we also observed enhancement and sharpening of the coherent backscattering cone. Since light from the center of the backscatter cone experience the largest number of scatterings (i.e. longest gain length), this result is thus consistent with the random laser model that the supernarrow peak is due to amplification and stimulated emission of photon in the random gain medium. The time-resolved pump-probe measurement shows that the lifetime of the emission state above the lasing threshold is only a few picoseconds which is consistent with the interpretation that the supernarrow peaks are due to stimulated emission.
We investigated the dynamics of coherent backscattering cone and random laser in a disordered gain medium of ZnO powder. Theoretical fit to the coherent backscattering cone yields a transport mean free path l approximately equal to the probe wavelength λ, indicating that the scattering process is in the strong scattering regime. Supernarrow emissions from the laser are accompanied by enhancement and sharpening of the coherent backscattering cone. This enhanced and sharpened backscattering cone returns to a normal profile within 10–20ps, indicating an ultrafast gain lifetime in the medium, which is in good agreement with the time-resolved measurement of the random laser emissions.
Random lasing is a phenomenon in which light amplification is favoured by a disordered environment[1]. A vast body of research exists that endorses the exciting physics seen in such media[2-4]. Hitherto, however, these systems have always been studied in the self-amplification mode where the spontaneous fluorescence of the medium is amplified. In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate the amplification of an external coherent signal by a random amplifying system. This is the first such demonstration, which has potential applications in optical amplifiers, frequency control of random lasers[5,6] etc.
In this paper we present calculations on light diffusion with amplification that can explain previous experiments on the spontaneous emission from such a medium. Also we discuss the experimental considerations on realizing a medium that both multiply scatters and amplifies light. In an amplifying random medium different processes can occur. We argue that one can distinguish three regimes depending on the amount of scattering, and discuss these regimes in the context of random laser action. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.