The researchers Zala Korenjak and Asst. Prof. Matjaž Humar from the Laboratory for Bio-integrated Photonics, Department of Condensed Matter Physics at the Jožef Stefan Institute have published a paper in Physical Review X entitled Smectic and soap bubble optofluidic lasers. In the paper, they demonstrated for the first time that smectic and soap bubbles can be used as lasers. They doped the bubbles with a fluorescent dye and pumped them with an external laser to induce whispering gallery mode optical lasing. Bubbles made of smectic liquid crystals have a very thin and uniform wall and are extremely stable. Shifts in lasing wavelengths in the spectrum of the emitted light, which contained hundreds of regularly spaced sharp peaks, enabled the measurement of subtle size changes of just ten nanometers in a millimeter-sized bubble. This incredible precision allowed the bubbles to be used as one of the best pressure and electric field sensors developed to date. This unique physical system may in the future allow the study of novel optical and mechanical phenomena in thin films. Matjaž and Zala presented the research in video.