Enhanced cone-shaped lasing from cholesteric liquid crystals

Strong conical lasing in the violet-blue range of the spectrum from dye doped cholesteric liquid crystals is obtained. In contrast to the previously reported cases, the cone laser emission is sharply increased at the local maximums of the luminescence peaks of the dyes. Besides that, for obtaining the cone lasing strong focusing of the pumping beam is not required. Extremely low pump density is achieved for the cholesteric liquid crystal lasers. It is important that the cone lasing can be observed without simultaneous manifestation of any other laser emissions.