Cooling with light: Exploring optical cooling in semiconductor quantum dots

Phys.org  November 26, 2024 Highly efficient anti-Stokes (AS) photoluminescence (PL) is observed from halide perovskite quantum dots (QDs) due to their strong electron–phonon interactions. However, the PL quantum efficiency in QDs is primarily dominated by multiparticle nonradiative Auger recombination processes under intense photoexcitation, which impose limits on the optical cooling gain. Researchers in Japan investigated the Auger recombination of dot-in-crystal perovskites and quantitatively estimated the maximum optical cooling gain and the corresponding excitation intensity. Their optical cooling experiments demonstrated a maximum photo cooling of approximately 9 K from room temperature confirming that increasing the excitation intensity led to a transition […]