Researchers have ascribed the laserlike emission from organic dye molecules and conjugated polymers to mechanisms such as cooperative emission, amplified spontaneous emission and the formation of local cavities. A team at Auburn University in Alabama has reported a conversion efficiency of up to 40 percent in the organic molecular salt styrylpyridinium cyanine dye, which it attributes to cooperative emission.The research team pumped the salt with 55-ps pulses from a frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser. The threshold pump energy was less than 1 µJ, and the sample yielded a photoluminescence spectrum with a center at 620 nm. A report of the work appeared in the Aug. 6 issue of Applied Physics Letters.