Potential of ytterbium doped silica glass for solid-state optical refrigeration to below 200 K
Brian Topper, Alexander Neumann, Alexander R. Albrecht, Angel Flores, Stefan Kühn, Denny Häßner, Sigrun Hein, Christian Hupel, Johannes Nold, Nicoletta Haarlammert, Thomas Schreiber, Mansoor Sheik‐Bahae, Arash Mafi
Abstract
We report on the optical refrigeration of ytterbium doped silica glass by >40 K starting at room temperature, which represents more than a two-fold improvement over the previous state-of-the-art. A spectroscopic investigation of the steady-state and time-dependent fluorescence was carried out over the temperature range 80 K to 400 K. The calculated minimum achievable temperature for our Yb 3+ doped silica sample is ≈150 K, implying the potential for utilizing ytterbium doped silica for solid-state optical refrigeration below temperatures commonly achieved by standard Peltier devices.