Time sequence variation of incoherent and coherent random laser based on positive replica of abalone shell

Abstract

Besides the scattering structures, the energy transfer (ET) process in the gain medium plays a significant role in the competition between coherent (comprising strongly coherent components) and incoherent (consisting of weakly coherent or “hidden” coherent components) modes of random lasers. In this study, bichromatic emission random lasers were successfully created using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) replicas with grooved structures that imitate the inner surface of abalone shells as scattering substrates. The influence mechanism of the ET process from the monomer to dimer in the Rhodamine 640 dye on the competition of random laser modes was thoroughly investigated from both spectral and temporal dimensions. It was confirmed that the ET process can reduce the gain of monomers while amplifying the gain of dimers. By considering the dominant high-efficiency ET processes, an energy transfer factor associated with the pump energy density was determined. Notably, for the first time, it was validated that the statistical distribution characteristics of the time sequence variations in the coherent random laser generated by dimers closely resemble a normal distribution. This finding demonstrates the feasibility of producing high-quality random number sequences.