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  • Open Access

Purcell-enhanced optical refrigeration

Peng Ju1,*, Kunhong Shen1,*, Stefan Püschel2, Yuanbin Jin1, Hiroki Tanaka2, and Tongcang Li1,3,4,5,†

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †Contact author: tcli@purdue.edu
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 023149 – Published 11 May, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/d7pk-hsry

Abstract

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 (LN2) 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 LN2 temperatures. Using experimentally measured optical coefficients, our theoretical analysis predicts a minimum achievable internal temperature of about 38 K for a Yb3+:YLiF4 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.

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Outline

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 023149– Published 11 May, 2026
  • Received 29 April 2024
  • Revised 22 September 2025
  • Accepted 21 March 2026
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