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Optical and Electronic Cooling of Solids

Laser cooling of solids: latest achievements and prospects

Raman Kashyap, Galina A. Nemova

Published Feb 22, 2018• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1117/12.2292514

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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.
This review discusses the progress and ongoing efforts in optical refrigeration. Optical refrigeration is a process in which phonons are removed from a solid by anti-Stokes fluorescence. The review first summarizes the history of optical refrigeration, noting the success in cooling rare-earth-doped solids to cryogenic temperatures. It then examines in detail a four-level model of rare-earth-based optical refrigeration. This model elucidates the essential roles that the various material parameters, such as the spacing of the energy levels and the radiative quantum efficiency, play in the process of optical refrigeration. The review then describes the experimental techniques for cryogenic optical refrigeration of rare-earth-doped solids employing non-resonant and resonant optical cavities. It then examines the work on laser cooling of semiconductors, emphasizing the differences between optical refrigeration of semiconductors and rare-earth-doped solids and the new challenges and advantages of semiconductors. It then describes the significant experimental results including the observed optical refrigeration of CdS nanostructures. The review concludes by discussing the engineering challenges to the development of practical optical refrigerators, and the potential advantages and uses of these refrigerators.
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.
In recent decades, laser cooling of solids based on anti-Stokes fluorescence, also known as Pringsheim ‘s optical cooling, has garnered a great deal of scientific interest due to its applications, including optical solid-state coolers, radiation-balanced lasers and rare-earth-doped particles for biological applications. This Reprint compiles cutting-edge research on the subject carried out by various scientific teams all over the world. It will be useful to anyone involved in solid-state physics, low-temperature physics or cryogenics.
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.
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.
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.