Cholesteric liquid crystals are chiral nematics, where the handedness of the constituent molecules causes the orientation of the local nematic director to vary in space. In the helical cholesteric structure, the director is perpendicular to the helix axis, and its orientation varies linearly with position along the helix axis. The spatial period of the structure is the pitch, which is determined by the concentration and the helical twisting power of the chiral constituents. As a consequence of the periodicity of the helical cholesteric structure and the birefringence of the liquid crystal, for a range of wavelengths, light propagation along the helix axis is forbidden for one of the normal modes. Since propagation is forbidden, incident light with a wavelength in this band and with the same helicity as the cholesteric is strongly reflected. The edges of this reflection band are at wavelengths that are equal to the refractive indices times the pitch. [1] Because of the existence of the selective reflection band, cholesteric liquid crystals are 1D photonic bandgap materials. The bandgap structure of cholesteric liquid crystals allows for the possibility of lasing without external mirrors that usually form a laser cavity. When a fluorescent dye is dissolved in the cholesteric host so that the peak of the fluorescent emission of the dye is in the selective reflection band of the cholesteric, propagation of one normal mode of the emitted light is forbidden. As a consequence, at low pump intensities, the fluorescence spectrum of the dye is modified, [2] showing suppression of emission in the reflection band, and enhanced emission near the band edge. As the pump intensity is increased, the linewidth of the enhanced fluorescence at the band edge narrows, and, above a pump threshold, lasing occurs. [2] Thin samples, typically 15‐30 lm in thickness, of low molecular weight cholesteric liquid crystals incorporating a variety of dyes [3] have been shown to lase. The primary role of the cholesteric liquid crystal in these systems is to act as a distributed cavity. Lasing occurs at the band edges, [2‐4] as pre