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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Laser cooling with nanoparticles

Galina A. Nemova, Elton Soares de Lima Filho, Sébastien Loranger, Raman Kashyap

Published Oct 23, 2012• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Theoretical schemes for laser cooling with nanoparticles have been presented and comprehensively investigated. It is shown that specially designed samples based on nanoparticles can be used to improve the process of laser cooling of solids. One of the proposed schemes is based on lead salt colloidal quantum dots (QDs) doped in a glass host. The second one is based on Tm3+ doped oxy fluoride glass ceramic. It has been shown that lead salt colloidal QDs doped in a glass host can operate as artificial atoms. Very short (microsecond range) radiative lifetimes of the excited 1Sh level of PbSe QDs in comparison with the relatively long (millisecond) radiative lifetime of rare-earth (RE) ions allows the cooling process to be accelerated and to use new hosts with relatively high maximum phonon energy, which have so far been considered not suitable for cooling with RE ions. It has been shown that the second sample, which is based on Tm3+ doped oxy fluoride glass ceramic provides the unique combination of high chemical and mechanical stability of the oxide glass, which is important for a number of applications, and the low phonon energy of the fluoride nano-crystals, which trap a majority of Tm3+ ions participating in the cooling process. This is highly beneficial for laser cooling of solids, since the effective embedding of rare-earth ions in the crystalline phase with low phonon energy provides a high quantum efficiency for the 3F4 → 3H6 transition involved in the cooling cycle in the Tm3+ ions, which is a key parameter for laser cooling of solids.

DOI
10.1117/12.2001317

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Theoretical schemes for laser cooling with nanoparticles have been presented and comprehensively investigated. It is shown that specially designed samples based on nanoparticles can be used to improve the process of laser cooling of solids. One of the proposed schemes is based on lead salt colloidal quantum dots (QDs) doped in a glass host. The second one is based on Tm3+ doped oxy fluoride glass ceramic. It has been shown that lead salt colloidal QDs doped in a glass host can operate as artificial atoms. Very short (microsecond range) radiative lifetimes of the excited 1Sh level of PbSe QDs in comparison with the relatively long (millisecond) radiative lifetime of rare-earth (RE) ions allows the cooling process to be accelerated and to use new hosts with relatively high maximum phonon energy, which have so far been considered not suitable for cooling with RE ions. It has been shown that the second sample, which is based on Tm3+ doped oxy fluoride glass ceramic provides the unique combination of high chemical and mechanical stability of the oxide glass, which is important for a number of applications, and the low phonon energy of the fluoride nano-crystals, which trap a majority of Tm3+ ions participating in the cooling process. This is highly beneficial for laser cooling of solids, since the effective embedding of rare-earth ions in the crystalline phase with low phonon energy provides a high quantum efficiency for the 3F4 → 3H6 transition involved in the cooling cycle in the Tm3+ ions, which is a key parameter for laser cooling of solids.
The recent achievements devoted to cooling of solids with a laser are presented in this paper. We discuss the latest results of traditional laser cooling of solids based on rare earth ions and new techniques based on colloidal lead-salt quantum dots doped in a glass host, laser cooling in Tm3+-doped oxy-fluoride glass ceramic. Relatively short (microsecond) lifetime of the excited level of the PbSe QDs compared to the millisecond lifetime of the excited level of RE ions allows an acceleration of the cooling process and provides an opportunity to use new materials with higher phonon energy as hosts, which are normally considered unsuitable for cooling with RE ions. Another new approach to the laser cooling problem based on super-radiance has been considered in this paper. The advantages of optical refrigeration with rare earth doped semiconductors, in which not only optically active electrons of the 4f shell but the valence and conduction bands of the host material are involved in cooling cycle is discussed. It is shown that involving the valence and conduction bands of the host in the cooling cycle allows the pump wavelength to be shorter than mean fluorescence wavelength. Raman laser cooling of solids as well as observation of spontaneous Brillouin cooling have been presented.
We present a theoretical scheme for laser cooling in Tm3+-doped oxy-fluoride glass ceramic (GC). Tm3+-doped GC has a unique combination of high chemical and mechanical stability related to the oxide glass and low phonon energy of the fluoride nanocrystals, which trap a majority of Tm3+ ions. This unique property of GC makes it attractive for a number of applications. The effective embedding of rare-earth ions in the crystalline phase with low phonon energy provides high quantum efficiency for the F43→H63 transition in the Tm3+ ions participating in the cooling cycle.
This review focuses on optical refrigeration with the anti-Stokes fluorescence of rare-earth (RE)-doped low-phonon micro- and nanocrystals. Contrary to bulk samples, where the thermal energy is contained in internal vibrational modes (phonons), the thermal energy of nanoparticles is contained in both the translational motion and internal vibrational (phonons) modes of the sample. Much theoretical and experimental research is currently devoted to the laser cooling of nanoparticles. In the majority of the related work, only the translational energy of the particles has been suppressed. In this review, the latest achievements in hybrid optical refrigeration of RE-doped low-phonon micro- and nanoparticles are presented. Hybrid cooling permits the suppression of not only the translational energy of the RE-doped particles, but also their internal vibrational phonon thermal energy. Laser cooling of nanoparticles is not a simple task. Mie resonances can be used to enhance laser cooling with the anti-Stokes fluorescence of nanoparticles made of low-phonon RE-doped solids. Laser-cooled nanoparticles is a promising tool for fundamental quantum-mechanical studies, nonequilibrium thermodynamics, and precision measurements of forces.
We present a theoretical scheme for laser cooling of rare-earth-doped solids with optical superradiance (SR), which is the coherent, sharply directed spontaneous emission of photons by a system of laser-excited rare-earth ions in the solid-state host (glass or crystal). We consider an Yb+{}^{+}+-doped ZnF4{}_{4}4​-BaF2{}_{2}2​-LaF3{}_{3}3​-AlF3{}_{3}3​-NaF (ZBLAN) sample pumped at a wavelength 1015 nm, with a rectangular pulsed source with a power of \ensuremath{\sim}433 W and a duration of 10 ns. The intensity of the SR is proportional to the square of the number of excited ions. This unique feature of SR permits an increase in the rate of the cooling process in comparison with the traditional laser cooling of the rare-earth-doped solids with anti-Stokes spontaneous incoherent radiation (fluorescence). This scheme overcomes the limitation of using only low phonon energy glasses for laser cooling.
Laser cooling of solids with anti-Stokes fluorescence is currently attracting widespread attention because of the wide range of its applications, including all-optical cryocooling for airborne and space-based applications, heat suppression in high-power lasers, and cooling of nanoparticles for biological and mesoscopic physics. This laser cooling process has typically very low (only a few%) efficiency and its enhancement is therefore highly desirable. In this work, we propose to leverage Mie resonance to enhance anti-Stokes fluorescence cooling in RE-doped nanoparticles. As an example, we consider an Yb3+:YAG nanosphere pumped at the long wavelength tail of the Yb3+ absorption spectrum, at 1030 nm. We show that if the radius of the nanosphere is adjusted to the pump wavelength in such a manner that the pump excites some of the Mie resonant modes of the sample, the cooling power density generated in the sample is considerably enhanced and the temperature of the sample is consequently appreciably decreased.
Laser cooling of solids, also known as optical refrigeration, is an area of optical science investigating the interaction of light with condensed matter to remove thermal energy of a solid through the interaction of the pump photons and phonons in a solid. Apart from being of fundamental scientific interest, this topic addresses a number of important practical issues such as the development of all solid state optical cryo-coolers, and biological applications. A short history of laser cooling as well as latest achievement of optical refrigeration in rare-earth (RE) doped macro-samples are presented and discussed in the paper. The main technique of laser cooling of RE doped solids based on anti-Stokes fluorescence is presented in this paper. The new approach to optical refrigeration based on the Raman cooling is also considered. It is shown that the future prospects of the research are connected with laser cooling of μm- and nm-sized samples, are in their applications in biophysics in the fundamental studies of low-temperature physics.