Temperature controllable optical switch for erbium-doped random fiber laser

•A random fiber laser optical switch with a 36 dB extinction ratio at a wavelength from 1529.00 to 1533.16 nm is obtained at pump power of 60.9 mW when the temperature increases from 60 to 61°C under liquid crystal filled photonic crystal fiber random laser a sensor.•We combines the concept of the distributed feedback sensing and point sensing, which makes full use of the Rayleigh scattering feedback and the secondary amplification of EDF to obtain the random lasers.•We can use the different clearing temperatures of the LCs to obtain different temperature sensing random fiber lasers optical switches with high extinction ratio.