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arXiv:2407.19601 · Physical Review Applied

Purcell-enhanced solid-state laser cooling

Mohammed Benzaouia, Shanhui Fan

Published Dec 19, 2025• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We show that Purcell effect can lead to a substantial enhancement in the maximum cooling power for solid-state laser cooling. We numerically demonstrate such enhancement in a patterned slot-waveguide structure using ytterbium-doped silica as the active material. The enhancement arises primarily from the increase of saturation power density and the escape efficiency, and can persist in spite of the presence of parasitic absorption in the structure surrounding the active material. Our results point to a new opportunity in photonic structure design for optical refrigeration.

DOI
10.1103/8hmg-w9tx

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We show that Purcell effect can lead to a substantial enhancement in the maximum cooling power for solid-state laser cooling. We numerically demonstrate such enhancement in a patterned slot-waveguide structure using ytterbium-doped silica as the active material. The enhancement arises primarily from the increase of saturation power density and the escape efficiency, and can persist in spite of the presence of parasitic absorption in the structure surrounding the active material. Our results point to a new opportunity in photonic structure design for optical refrigeration.
Recent experiments and theoretical models relevant to optical cooling of bulk matter are reviewed.A new derivation of the cooling efficiency, accounting both for the escape probability and the saturation intensity, is developed.Applications to an optical refrigerator and a radiationbalanced solid-state laser are considered.An overview is given of results and ideas pertaining to fluorescent cooling of rare-earth-doped solids, semiconductors, fluids, and other potential cooling materials, including the basic thermodynamics of the process.
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The enhanced laser cooling performance of rare-earth-ion-doped nanocrystalline powders is predicted, compared to the bulk material, using Yb3+:Y2O3{\mathrm{Yb}}^{3+}:{\mathrm{Y}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}Yb3+:Y2​O3​ as the model material. This is achieved by enhancing the off-resonance, phonon-assisted absorption, which is proportional to the three factors considered in this paper: the dopant concentration, the pumping field energy, and the excitation coefficient. Using the energy transfer theory for concentration quenching, the optimum concentration corresponding to the maximum cooling power is found to be considerably larger than the currently used value, suggesting noticeable enhancement effects for laser cooling. The pumping field energy is enhanced in random nanopowders compared with bulk crystals under the same irradiation, due to the multiple scattering of photons. Photons are thus localized in the medium and do not propagate through, increasing the photon absorption of the pumping beam (and it is shown that the reabsorption of the fluorescence is negligible). Using molecular dynamics simulations, the phonon density of states (DOS) of the nanopowder is calculated, and found to have broadened modes, and extended small tails at low and high frequencies. The second-order electronic transition rate for the anti-Stokes luminescence is calculated using the Fermi golden rule, which includes the influence of this phonon DOS, and is shown to have enhancement effects on the laser cooling efficiency using nanopowders. It is finally concluded that these three enhancement mechanisms are essentially to increase the population of the three participating carriers (electron, photon, and phonon) in the interacting volume, and this also points out directions for enhancing laser cooling performance in bulk materials.
Since the successful realization of laser cooling of solids in 19951, the optical cooling techniques2-5 have made fast development, and laser cooling experiments have obtained some important progress. However, how to improve the absorption of pump laser and enhance the temperature drops so as to realize the practical optical refrigeration, it has become a hot research point in applied physics. As early as 2002, the Heeg et. al proposed an extraor intra-cavity enhancement scheme to improve the laser cooling effect of solids2, and experimentally demonstrated their intra-cavity enhancement scheme in 2004, and found that there is no large temperature drops due to the experimental parameters were not optimized3. In 2003, Hoyt proposed a multiple-pass scheme to enhance the absorption of pump laser and did a series of experimental researches about the multiple-pass scheme4. As expected, a greater temperature drop was obtained. However, due to some limitation in the early work, it is difficulty to cool the sample to the cryogenics temperature, such as low absorption of cooling materials5, the coating of the sample surfaces3, the purity of the sample6, the load from the ambient1,7, etc. Therefore, people have done much work to improve the record of temperature drop. For example, to avoid the coating absorption deposited on the sample surface, they cut the sample with a Brewster angle along with the cavity axis8, or improve the purity of cooling material9-11, and so on. Mansoor. Seletskiy used the multi-pass scheme to do some meaningful experiments and obtain a milestone progress, that is, they cool a high pure Yb3+-doped YLF to cryogenic temperature12 in this year. To obtain an efficient absorption, another scheme was proposed to insert a Brewster-cut sample into a resonant cavity and make the cavity to be resonated with the pump laser, and then the maximum absorption of the pump laser can be achieved 2, 13-18. Seletskiy demonstrated this scheme in the experiment13. However, this scheme depends on the power of the pump laser. Fortunately, the intra-cavity scheme proposed by Heeg can solve this problem in the case of low absorption2. He also suggested that inserting a cooling sample into the resonant cavity of a laser with a gain (so-called intra-cavity enhancement scheme) to realize the maximum absorption of the pump laser2, 14, 19 and carried out it in the experiment3. Besides of enhancement laser cooling of bulk solids using resonant cavity, we propose another new scheme to optically cool some film materials (i.e., filmier solids) by using a high fineness planar waveguide, which is similar to the cavity enhanced cooling scheme. In our laser cooling scheme, the solid film as a high-index gap waveguide is separated from a prism by a low-index gap one, and an incident laser beam is resonantly coupled into a