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arXiv:2411.04733 · Entropy

Internal State Cooling of an Atom with Thermal Light

Amanda Younes, Randall Putnam, Paul Hamilton, Wesley C. Campbell

Published Feb 21, 2025• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

A near-minimal instance of optical cooling is experimentally presented, wherein the internal-state entropy of a single atom is reduced more than twofold by illuminating it with broadband, incoherent light. Since the rate of optical pumping by a thermal state increases monotonically with its temperature, the cooling power in this scenario increases with higher thermal occupation, an example of a phenomenon known as cooling by heating. In contrast to optical pumping using coherent, narrow-band laser light, here, we perform the same task with fiber-coupled, broadband sunlight, the brightest laboratory-accessible source of continuous blackbody radiation.

DOI
10.3390/e27030222

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A near-minimal instance of optical cooling is experimentally presented, wherein the internal-state entropy of a single atom is reduced more than twofold by illuminating it with broadband, incoherent light. Since the rate of optical pumping by a thermal state increases monotonically with its temperature, the cooling power in this scenario increases with higher thermal occupation, an example of a phenomenon known as cooling by heating. In contrast to optical pumping using coherent, narrow-band laser light, here, we perform the same task with fiber-coupled, broadband sunlight, the brightest laboratory-accessible source of continuous blackbody radiation.
Cooling of systems to sub-Kelvin temperatures is usually done using either a cold bath of particles or spontaneous photon scattering from a laser field; in either case, cooling is driven by interaction with a well-ordered cold (i.e., low-entropy) system. However, there have recently been several schemes proposed for "cooling by heating," in which raising the temperature of some mode drives the cooling of the desired system faster. We discuss how to cool a trapped ion to its motional ground state using unfiltered sunlight at 5800K to drive the cooling. We show how to treat the statistics of thermal light in a single-mode fiber for delivery to the ion and show experimentally how the blackbody spectrum is strongly modified by being embedded in quasi-one-dimension. Quantitative estimates for the achievable cooling rate with our measured fiber-coupled low-dimensional sunlight show promise for demonstrating this implementation of cooling by heating.
Cooling of systems to sub-kelvin temperatures is usually done using either a cold bath of particles or spontaneous photon scattering from a laser field; in either case, cooling is driven by interaction with a well-ordered, cold (i.e. low entropy) system. However, there have recently been several schemes proposed for ``cooling by heating,'' in which raising the temperature of some mode drives the cooling of the desired system faster. We discuss how to cool a trapped ion to its motional ground state using unfiltered sunlight at 5800 K5800\,\mathrm{K}5800K to drive the cooling. We show how to treat the statistics of thermal light in a single-mode fiber for delivery to the ion, and show experimentally how the black-body spectrum is strongly modified by being embedded in quasi-one-dimension. Quantitative estimates for the achievable cooling rate with our measured fiber-coupled, low-dimensional sunlight show promise for demonstrating this implementation of cooling by heating.
Optical refrigeration using anti-Stokes photoluminescence is now well established, especially for rare-earth-doped solids where cooling to cryogenic temperatures has recently been achieved. The cooling efficiency of optical refrigeration is constrained by the requirement that the increase in the entropy of the photon field must be greater than the decrease in the entropy of the sample. Laser radiation has been used in all demonstrated cases of optical refrigeration with the intention of minimizing the entropy of the absorbed photons. Here, we show that as long as the incident radiation is unidirectional, the loss of coherence does not significantly affect the cooling efficiency. Using a general formulation of radiation entropy as the von Neumann entropy of the photon field, we show how the cooling efficiency depends on the properties of the light source, such as wavelength, coherence, and directionality. Our results suggest that the laws of thermodynamics permit optical cooling of materials with incoherent sources, such as light emitting diodes and filtered sunlight, almost as efficiently as with lasers. Our findings have significant and immediate implications for design of compact all-solid-state devices cooled via optical refrigeration.
Optical refrigeration using anti-Stokes photoluminescence is now well established, especially for rare-earth-doped solids where cooling to cryogenic temperatures has recently been achieved. The cooling efficiency of optical refrigeration is constrained by the requirement that the increase in entropy of the photon field must be greater than the decrease in entropy of the sample. Laser radiation has been used in all demonstrated cases of optical refrigeration with the intention of minimizing the entropy of the absorbed photons. In this presentation, I will show that as long as the incident radiation is unidirectional, the loss of coherence does not significantly affect the cooling efficiency. Using a general formulation of radiation entropy as the von Neumann entropy of the photon field, I will show how the cooling efficiency depends on the properties of the light source such as wavelength, coherence, and directionality. These results suggest that the laws of thermodynamics permit optical cooling of materials with incoherent sources such as light emitting diodes and filtered sunlight almost as efficiently as with lasers.
The translational motion of molecular ions can be effectively cooled sympathetically to temperatures below 100 mK in ion traps through Coulomb interactions with laser-cooled atomic ions. The distribution of internal rovibrational states, however, gets in thermal equilibrium with the typically much higher temperature of the environment within tens of seconds. We consider a concept for rotational cooling of such internally hot, but translationally cold, heteronuclear diatomic molecular ions. The scheme relies on a combination of optical pumping from a few specific rotational levels into a "dark state" with redistribution of rotational populations mediated by blackbody radiation.
The methods producing cold molecules from cold atoms tend to leave molecular ensembles with substantial residual internal energy. For instance, cesium molecules initially formed via photoassociation of cold cesium atoms are in several vibrational levels nu of the electronic ground state. We applied a broadband femtosecond laser that redistributes the vibrational population in the ground state via a few electronic excitation/spontaneous emission cycles. The laser pulses are shaped to remove the excitation frequency band of the nu = 0 level, preventing re-excitation from that state. We observed a fast and efficient accumulation ( approximately 70% of the initially detected molecules) in the lowest vibrational level, nu = 0, of the singlet electronic state. The validity of this incoherent depopulation pumping method is very general and opens exciting prospects for laser cooling and manipulation of molecules.