Two-photon-pumped lasing from colloidal nanocrystal quantum dots.

Upconverted lasing in the nonlinear, two-photon absorption regime has been demonstrated, for the first time to the best of our knowledge in colloidal nanocrystal quantum dots (NQDs). Upon pulse excitation at sub-bandgap photon energies the radiative recombination of excitons in close-packed CdSe/CdS/ZnS core-shell NQDs was found to be sufficiently fast to compete with the intrinsic nonradiative Auger recombination, as confirmed by the presence of a fast decay (approximately 7 ps) in the time-resolved photoluminescence.