Surface plasmon assisted directional laserlike emission from a highly scattering dye doped polymeric gain medium

Summary form only given. The first observation of laserlike emission from a scattering medium consisting of TiO/sub 2/ particles in a dye solution was reported a few years ago. The emission from such system, which was named "laser paint" (LP) exhibits the characteristics of a multimode laser oscillator, although no resonant cavity is used. The phenomenon has been well studied but the LP-emission, which is almost spatially isotropic, would be more useful for applications if a scheme could be developed for obtaining directional emission. In this communication we report the first observation of quasi-directional LP-emission. The experiments were performed with a sample of a PMMA flat disc doped with Rhodamine.