The reflectance of the dye after heating to various temperatures.

As can be seen, the reflectivity falls off sharply after 150 degrees. This is the "pit" effect read by the reading lasers. It can be seen that both the dye and the polycarbonate play a role in the recording of data and it is the temperatures at which these vary which leads to characteristics of the disc such as the signal to noise ratio.

A cyanine dye was used in the experiments which produced this data.

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