Spatial solitons to mold random lasers in nematic liquid crystals [Invited]

Dye-doped nematic liquid crystals support random lasing under optical pumping, as well as reorientational optical spatial solitons acting as all-optical waveguides. By synergistically combining these two responses in a collinear pump-soliton geometry, the resulting soliton-enhanced random laser exhibits higher conversion efficiency and better directional properties. After a short account on random lasers and solitons in nematic liquid crystals - nematicons - we describe our experimental results on nematicon-molded random lasers.Peer reviewe