Effect of evaporation on blinking properties of the glycerol microdrop Raman laser

Abstract

We present long-term measurements of the blinking (on/off) behavior of the glycerol microdroplet Raman laser and demonstrate the dependency of the lasing bursts on the evaporation rate of the microdroplet. Electrodynamic levitation is used to study the glycerol microdroplets. Single and multimode lasing are achieved and shown here for droplets of 10.3 and 44.7 μm in diameter, respectively. Typical threshold fluences are measured to be between 200 and 390 mJ/cm2. Lasing occurs in temporally separated nearly symmetric bursts which increase in frequency and decrease in duration as the evaporation rate of the droplet is increased. Hence, we conclude that the Raman lasing blinking is caused by double resonances in the evaporating droplet and show that it can be manipulated by controlling the droplet's evaporation rate. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.