Cholesteric liquid crystal holographic laser

A new type of lasing was obtained on the basis of a dye-doped cholesteric liquid crystal laser with transversally distributed excitation. Two coherent beams of the pumping laser formed an interference pattern in the planar dye-doped cholesteric layer and provided laser generation in the separate narrow strips of the pumped area. Each of the strips demonstrated lasing along the cholesteric axis. But, due to the mutual coherence of the separate strips emission, the total picture of lasing represented an interference pattern. Thus, in contrast to the conventional lasers, the intensity distribution in the laser emission pattern had a periodical character similar to diffraction from an elementary dynamic hologram.