Towards modeling of random lasing in dye doped bio-organic based systems: ray-tracing and cellular automaton analysis

One of many photonic applications of biopolymers as functional materials is random lasing resulting from an incorporation of highly luminescent dyes into biopolymeric matrix, which leads to a random but coherent light scattering in amplifying medium. In spite of numerous theoretical and experimental studies the origin of the coherence is still not clear and various scenarios are discussed. In particular, inhomogeneity of biopolymeric layers can hypothetically promote the feedback in the scattering of the emitted light resulting in coherent and incoherent random lasing. In this paper we analyze the light scattering in a model system of scattering centers of circular shapes and various dimensions using ray-tracing techniques. In the second part, which has mostly a tutorial character, we present the approach to the study of random lasing using a cellular automaton model of Wiersma et al.