Nanosecond control and optical pulse shaping by stimulated emission depletion in a liquid crystal

We study anisotropic Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED) from dye molecules, which are collectively ordered in a host liquid crystal. Due to the ordering of fluorescent emitters, the STED efficiency depends on the polarization of the depletion beam and time-delay of the STED pulse. The depletion efficiency is highest at lower temperatures in the highly ordered smectic-A phase and deteriorates in the higher temperature nematic and isotropic phases. We demonstrate by temporal tuning of STED that it is possible to generate an arbitrary sequence of nanosecond fluorescent pulses with variable width and variable delay. Our results show that the STED mechanism in principle allows for very fast (GHz) and efficient control of light by light, which could in the future be used for all-optical control of the flow of light in photonic microdevices based on liquid crystals. Using STED anisotropy and time-control, new modalities of STED imaging in liquid crystals could be developed.