Abstract Over the last decade, significant advances have been made toward the development of practical, tunable solid state dye lasers, which resulted in improved lasing efficiency with reduced dye photodegradation. To achieve this goal, a “chemical” approach was followed, where attention was focused onto the particular dye/host interaction and compatibility, specifically choosing already existing hosts for a given dye, synthesizing new dyes and/or matrices, or chemically modifying existing ones. Nevertheless, this approach was limited by a single fact learnt from the experience: there is no universal matrix which optimizes the efficiency and photostability of all dyes. This limitation could be overcome by following a “physical” approach, where the emission properties of the active medium are tailored by means of physical and structural modifications of the dye host. Following this approach, in this paper recent theoretical and experimental work is reviewed where it is demonstrated that following a simultaneous “physical” and “chemical” approach to tailor the emission properties of the host materials for solid state dye lasers, may lead, under specific circumstances, to the improvement of both the laser efficiency and photostability. In particular, it is demonstrated that optical scattering is not always detrimental either to conventional bulk lasers (laser rods or colloidal suspensions) or to integrated devices, but may give place, on the contrary, to dramatic improvements in the laser operation of organic (hybrid) laser rods, and to alternative ways of obtaining laser light from integrated devices based on the phenomenon of coherent random lasing, where feedback is provided by light scattering in an appropriate medium, without the need to manufacture complex periodic structures in the substrate. The processing and pumping flexibility of these materials, together with their low cost and capability of efficient emission across the whole visible spectrum makes them very attractive for the fabrication and development of coherent light sources suitable for integration in optoelectronic and disposable spectroscopic and sensing devices.

中文翻译：

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具有散射反馈的固态染料激光器

摘要 在过去的十年中，实用、可调谐的固态染料激光器的开发取得了重大进展，从而提高了激光效率并减少了染料光降解。为了实现这一目标，采用了一种“化学”方法，将注意力集中在特定染料/宿主的相互作用和相容性上，特别是为给定染料选择现有的宿主，合成新的染料和/或基质，或对现有染料和/或基质进行化学改性. 然而，这种方法受到从经验中学到的一个事实的限制：没有可以优化所有染料的效率和光稳定性的通用基质。这种限制可以通过遵循“物理”方法来克服，其中活性介质的发射特性是通过染料主体的物理和结构修改来定制的。遵循这种方法，在本文中回顾了最近的理论和实验工作，其中证明，遵循同步的“物理”和“化学”方法来定制固态染料激光器主体材料的发射特性，可能会导致特定的在这种情况下，可以同时提高激光效率和光稳定性。特别是，已经证明光学散射并不总是对传统的体激光器（激光棒或胶体悬浮液）或集成设备有害，相反，可能会导致有机（混合）激光操作的显着改进。 ）激光棒，以及基于相干随机激光现象从集成器件获得激光的替代方法，其中反馈由适当介质中的光散射提供，无需在基板中制造复杂的周期性结构。这些材料的加工和泵浦灵活性，加上它们的低成本和在整个可见光谱范围内的高效发射能力，使它们对于制造和开发适合集成在光电和一次性光谱和传感设备中的相干光源非常有吸引力。