Optical sensing has been subject to a great interest for the moderate intrusiveness of its operation. The introduction of random lasers in ’90s has opened the door for developing a new kind of optical sensors. In such a source, disorder is introduced within an inverted medium, increasing the lifetime of the radiation without the presence of an optical cavity. The striking point is that the spectral characteristics of the output emission are strongly dependent on the scattering properties of the medium, suggesting new methods to investigate disordered materials. Recently, a novel concept for optical sensing based on the physics of random laser has been reported,¹ overcoming the limits due to the alteration of the investigated sample by injecting an active material. Here we present a characterization of such a kind of sensor, suggesting non-invasive and also in-vivo applications.

Date Published: 16 May 2017
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 10231, Optical Sensors 2017, 102310E (16 May 2017); doi: 10.1117/12.2265534

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10231:
Optical Sensors 2017
Francesco Baldini; Jiri Homola; Robert A. Lieberman, Editor(s)