Random lasing following two-photon excitation of highly scattering gain media

We present experimental evidence of laser emission following two-photon excitation of dye-infiltrated random gain media with optical properties similar to biological tissue. The excitation was performed with femtosecond laser pulses at 800 nm and the emission (at 480 nm) was recorded with a spectrograph streak camera system. The coherent properties of the random lasing emission were also investigated by performing single photon counting. The applications of coherent laser light that can be emitted deep inside a random medium are far reaching, particularly for imaging and therapeutic purposes. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.