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Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Deep laser cooling of rare-earth-doped nanocrystals in a radio-frequency trap

Semyon S. Rudyi, Tatiana Vovk, Anton V. Kovalev, Vadim M. Polyakov, Andrei V. Ivanov, E. Yu. Perlin, Yu. Rozhdestvensky

Published Nov 2, 2017• 10 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We study hybrid optical cooling of rare-earth-doped mesoscopic crystals via the anti-Stokes fluorescence and collective photon recoil effect inside them. The proposed cooling scheme, composed of a radio-frequency trap and a three-dimensional optical potential, makes it possible to cool doped nanocrystals down to an external temperature of 10−8 K. By achieving the mechanical action values of ∼10ℏ, we come close to the macroscopic quantum states of a solid matter. Such deep translational cooling of nanocrystals paves the way to fundamental studies on the solid state and to applications in low-temperature chemistry and biophysics.

DOI
10.1364/josab.34.002441

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We study hybrid optical cooling of rare-earth-doped mesoscopic crystals via the anti-Stokes fluorescence and collective photon recoil effect inside them. The proposed cooling scheme, composed of a radio-frequency trap and a three-dimensional optical potential, makes it possible to cool doped nanocrystals down to an external temperature of 10−8 K. By achieving the mechanical action values of ∼10ℏ, we come close to the macroscopic quantum states of a solid matter. Such deep translational cooling of nanocrystals paves the way to fundamental studies on the solid state and to applications in low-temperature chemistry and biophysics.
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.
Laser cooling and trapping of Yb3+:YAG nano-crystals has been theoretically investigated. It has been shown that in the system of Yb3+:YAG nano-crystals pumped at 1030 nm in the long wavelength tail of the Yb3+ absorption spectrum both internal and translational laser cooling processes take place. The internal laser cooling process based on anti-Stokes fluorescence serves as a supplementary process to translational cooling of rare-earth (RE) doped nano-crystals. The internal laser cooling process can help to reach lower equilibrium translational temperatures of RE-doped nano-crystals.
Optical refrigeration of solids with anti-Stokes fluorescence has been widely explored as a vibration-free cryogenic cooling technology. A minimum temperature of 87 K has been demonstrated with rare-earth-ion-doped crystals using optical refrigeration. However, the depletion of the upper-lying energy levels in the ground-state manifold hinders further cooling to below the liquid nitrogen ( LN 2 ) temperatures, restricting its applications. In this work, we introduce a Purcell-enhanced optical refrigeration method to circumvent this limitation. This approach enhances the emission of high-energy photons by coupling the emitters to an optical cavity, blueshifting the mean emission wavelength. Such Purcell-enhanced emission facilitates cooling starting from a lower-energy level in the ground-state manifold, which exhibits a higher occupation below the LN 2 temperatures. Using experimentally measured optical coefficients, our theoretical analysis predicts a minimum achievable internal temperature of about 38 K for a Yb 3 + : YLiF 4 nanocrystal near a cavity under realistic conditions. The proposed method is applicable to other rare-earth-ion-doped materials and semiconductors and will have applications in creating superconducting and other quantum devices through solid-state cooling.
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.