Tunnelling cooling by a normal--vacuum--superconductor junction

The possibility of cooling a system from liquid helium temperature, 4.2~K, using a tunnel junction refrigerator is analysed. Calculations show that the device can be used over a wide temperature range from 4~K down to well below 1~mK with necessary cooling power. However, several serious difficulties must be overcome before the method can be used in low temperature laboratories.     

Opto-thermionic refrigeration in semiconductor heterostructures.

Combining the ideas of laser cooling and thermionic cooling, we have proposed an opto-thermionic cooling process, and investigated its cooling effect caused by the light emission from a quantum well embedded into a semiconductor pn junction. For a GaAs/AlGaAs opto-thermionic refrigerator in which the Auger recombination is the major nonradiative process, cooling can be achieved in a finite range of bias voltage. Using the measured values of the Auger coefficient, our calculated cooling rate is at least several watts/cm(2).     

Microwave cooling of Josephson plasma oscillations

An extended Josephson junction can be described as a microwave cavity coupled to a Josephson oscillator. This is formally equivalent to a Fabry-Perot cavity with a freely vibrating mirror, where it has been shown that radiation pressure from photons in the cavity can reduce (increase) the vibrations of the mirror, effectively cooling (heating) it. We demonstrate that, similarly, the superconducting phase difference across a Josephson junction-the Josephson phase-can be "cooled" or "heated" by microwave excitation of the junction and that both these effects increase with microwave power.     

High-performance electronic cooling with superconducting tunnel junctions

When biased at a voltage just below a superconductor's energy gap, a tunnel junction between this superconductor and a normal metal cools the latter. While the study of such devices has long been focused to structures of submicron size and consequently cooling power in the picowatt range, we have led a thorough study of devices with a large cooling power up to the nanowatt range. Here we describe how their performance can be optimized by using a quasi-particle drain and tuning the cooling junctions' tunnel barrier.     

Mode selection in a neuron driven by Josephson junction current in presence of magnetic field

Josephson junction is an active electric component and its channel current can be adjusted by external magnetic field, which can trigger additive phase error along the junction. From physical viewpoint, the Josephson junction can capture and release field energy when it is exposed to a magnetic field, and this time-varying current can be used to excite neural circuit for generating target firing patterns. In this paper, a Josephson junction is connected to a simple neural circuit, which is made of a capacitor, induction coil, a nonlinear resistor, two linear resistors and one constant voltage source in the branch, and the improved neural circuit is adjusted to percept external magnetic field and estimate the potential application of Josephson junction in nonlinear circuits. Bifurcation analysis is applied to explore the mode selection and dynamics dependence on parameters setting in the biophysical neural circuits. Furthermore, the neural circuit is exposed to external magnetic field and its physical effect is estimated by applying scale transformation on the variables and parameters in the neural circuit. It is confirmed that the neural circuit can be controlled and the neural activity shows distinct mode transition by taming the intensity (or angular frequency in periodic field) of external magnetic field. This kind of neural circuit can be further used as smart sensor for detecting weak magnetic field.     

Thermopower and conductance for a graphene p-n junction

The thermopower and conductance in a zigzag graphene p-n junction are studied by using the nonequilibrium Green's function method combined with the tight-binding Hamiltonian. Our results show that the conductance and thermopower of the junction can be modulated by its width, the potential drop, and the applied perpendicular magnetic fields. A narrow graphene p-n junction shows insulating characteristics, and its thermopower is much larger than that of the wider one around the Dirac point. The insulating characteristic of the junction decreases as the width increases. In particular, with increasing junction width or the potential drop, the first conductance plateau is strongly enhanced and the thermopower is inverted around the Dirac point. A perpendicular magnetic field strongly suppresses the conductance and enhances the thermopower in the p-n region. The influence of edge vacancy defects on the conductance and thermopower is also discussed. Our results provide theoretical references for modulating the electronic and thermal properties of a graphene p-n junction by tuning its geometry and working conditions.     

Cooling of a Gram-Scale Cantilever Flexure to 70 mK with a Servo-Modified Optical Spring

A series of recent articles have presented results demonstrating optical cooling of macroscopic objects, highlighting the importance of this phenomenon for investigations of macroscopic quantum mechanics and its implications for thermal noise in gravitational wave detectors. In this Letter, we present a measurement of the off-resonance suspension thermal noise of a 1 g oscillator, and we show that it can be cooled to just 70 mK. The cooling is achieved by using a servo to impose a phase delay between oscillator motion and optical force. A model is developed to show how optical rigidity and optical cooling can be interchangeable using this technique.     

Normal-metal-superconductor tunnel junction as a Brownian refrigerator

Thermal noise generated by a hot resistor (resistance R) can, under proper conditions, catalyze heat removal from a cold normal metal (N) in contact with a superconductor (S) via a tunnel barrier (I). Such a NIS junction is reminiscent of Maxwell's demon, rectifying the heat flow. Upon reversal of the temperature gradient between the resistor and the junction, the heat fluxes are reversed: this presents a regime which is not accessible in an ordinary voltage-biased NIS structure. We obtain analytical results for the cooling performance in an idealized high impedance environment and perform numerical calculations for general R. We conclude by assessing the experimental feasibility of the proposed effect.     

Electron and phonon cooling in a superconductor-normal-metal-superconductor tunnel junction

We present evidence for the cooling of normal-metal phonons, in addition to the well-known electron cooling, by electron tunneling in a superconductor-normal-metal-superconductor tunnel junction. The normal-metal electron temperature is extracted by comparing the device current-voltage characteristics to the theoretical prediction. We use a quantitative model for the heat transfer that includes the electron-phonon coupling in the normal metal and the Kapitza resistance between the substrate and the metal. It gives a very good fit to the data and enables us to extract an effective phonon temperature in the normal metal.     

Quasiparticle cooling using a topological insulator–superconductor hybrid junction

In this work, we investigate the thermoelectric properties of a hybrid junction realised coupling surface states of a three-dimensional topological insulator with a conventional s-wave superconductor. We focus on the ballistic devices and study the quasiparticle flow, carrying both electric and thermal currents, adopting a scattering matrix approach based on conventional Blonder–Tinkham–Klapwijk formalism. We calculate the cooling efficiency of the junction as a function of the microscopic parameters of the normal region (i.e. the chemical potential, etc.). The cooling power increases when moving from a regime of Andreev specular-reflection to a regime where Andreev retro-reflection dominates. Differently from the case of a conventional N/S interface, we can achieve efficient cooling of the normal region, without including any explicit impurity scattering at the interface, to increase normal reflection.     

结温与热阻制约大功率LED发展

LED结温高低直接影响到LED出光效率、器件寿命、可靠性、发射波长等。保持LED结温往允许的范围内,是大功率LED芯片制备、器件封装和器件应用等每个环节都必须重点研究的关键因素,尤其是LED器件封装和器件应用设计必须着重解决的核心问题。首先介绍pn结结温对LED器什性能的影响,接着分析大功率LED结温与器件热阻的关系．基于对器件热阻的分析,得出了结温与热阻已经制约大功率LED进一步向更大功率发展的结论,并提出了如下两个观点：1．要在保持低成本和自然散热方式下提高LED器件的功率,根本的出路是提高光转换效率;2．在日前没有提高光转换效率的情况下,发展超过5W的大功率器件对工程应肘没有实质意义。     

Ferromagnetic 0-pi junctions as classical spins

The ground state of highly damped PdNi based 0-pi ferromagnetic Josephson junctions shows a spontaneous half quantum vortex, sustained by a supercurrent of undetermined sign. This supercurrent flows in the electrode of a Josephson junction used as a detector and produces a phi(0)/4 shift in its magnetic diffraction pattern. We have measured the statistics of the positive or the negative sign shift occurring at the superconducting transition of such a junction. The randomness of the shift sign, the reproducibility of its magnitude, and the possibility of achieving exact flux compensation upon field cooling are the features which show that 0-pi junctions behave as classical spins, just as magnetic nanoparticles with uniaxial anisotropy.     

热电制冷LED自然对流散热的设计与优化

为提升高热流密度下LED灯具的自然对流散热性能,以一款基于热电制冷（TEC）的单颗LED小型灯具模组为研究对象,在采用实验测量和回归拟合准确获得TEC性能参数的基础上,建立了有无TEC参与散热的等效热路模型,并选择合理的数学公式对其进行性能描述,进而遵循本文设计的计算流程快速得到各种散热性能数据。LED模组的散热分析表明：在恒定的LED热功率下,施加最佳的TEC电流可获得最高的散热性能;LED热功率越低,安装TEC的散热性能越比常规方法优异。经遗传算法优化前后的性能对比分析表明：优化后结构中TEC的合理工作区明显增大,能满足LED更高功率的散热需求;当LED为0.493 W时,优化后结构的最佳结温仅为15.66℃,远低于30℃的环境温度。基于TEC实验数据建立的等效热路模型,能为装配TEC的LED模组提供快速完整的散热设计分析与结构优化的合理方案。     

Effect of Environment on the Scattering of Electrons by a Junction of Different Topological Materials

The studies of electron transport through a junction of topological materials in the literature so far ignore the coupling of a topological material to its surrounding environment. Here, the dynamics of an open system through a stochastic Hamiltonian are simulated to investigate the influence of the environment on the scattering of electrons by a junction of different topological materials, such as a Dirac–Weyl magnetic junction and a topological insulator. It is found that, although the detrimental effect of the environment is inevitable, the Landauer conductance can be enhanced via adjusting the system–environment coupling strength. This result supplies the possibilty of changing the transport feature of topological materials by modulating the surrounded environment. It is also demonstrated that a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian can be used to replace the stochastic Hamiltonian for this study, when the system and the environment coupling are weak.     

Electronic cooling in superconducting tunnel junctions

The cooling power provided by the current through a superconductor/insulator/superconductor tunnel junction is studied theoretically. The influence of non-equilibrium distributions of the quasi-particles on the heat flow is analysed within a simple relaxation model. A superconducting gap enhancement can be explained within the equilibrium as well as the non-equilibrium model.     

结温对DCJTB混合YAG∶Ce3+白光LED光谱特性的影响

研究了结温变化对DCJTB混合YAG∶Ce3+荧光粉的白光LED光谱特性的影响。采用分层点粉的方法,在LED芯片上分层涂覆YAG荧光粉和有机材料DCJTB,可以使器件的显色指数高达90。利用实验室自行研发的一体化LED散热支架可方便准确测量出结温。实验表明：结温升高使蓝光芯片辐射幅值不断下降,YAG荧光粉被激发所辐射的黄光辐射幅值先增大后减小,红光光谱发生蓝移,器件的显色指数呈线性下降,色温先增大后减小。     

ICF平面低温冷冻靶系统的初步设计及应用

 利用Gifford-McMahon（G-M）制冷机提供低温源,研制了平面低温冷冻靶系统。该系统最低温度可以达到10 K,制冷功率随温度降低而降低,制冷速率可控。其中,在18.6 K其制冷功率可以达到6.5 W;在14 K其制冷功率为3 W。利用该系统,初步开展了氩、氢的冷冻实验,并研究了温度对激光惯性约束聚变靶丸结构的影响。获得了氩、氢平面低温冷冻靶,并观察到了低温诱导聚变靶丸形变现象。     

Non-classical radiation emission by a coherent conductor

We report experimental evidence that the microwave electromagnetic field generated by a normal conductor, here a tunnel junction placed at ultra-low temperature, can be non-classical. By measuring the quadratures of the electromagnetic field at one or two frequencies in the GHz range, we demonstrate the existence of squeezing as well as entanglement in such radiation. In one experiment, we observe that the variance of one quadrature of the photo-assisted noise generated by the junction goes below its vacuum level. In the second experiment, we demonstrate the existence of correlations between the quadratures taken at two frequencies, which can be stronger than allowed by classical mechanics, proving that the radiation at those two frequencies are entangled.¹     

大功率LED热阻自动测量方法研究

在没有散热措施的情况下,大功率LED芯片的温度迅速升高,当结温超过最大允许温度时,大功率LED会因过热而损坏。大功率LED灯具设计中,最主要的设计工作就是散热设计。利用LED半导体器件的结电压与结温具有良好的线性关系的特性,通过测量大功率LED工作时的正向压降,工作电流,恒温箱温度和热衬温度,采用的电学参数法,实现了大功率LED热阻的自动测量。设计并制作了大功率LED热阻自动测量仪,快速、准确的测量了LED晶片到热衬的热阻。六种不同规格LED晶片到热衬的热阻测量值与计算值之间的误差小于10%。热阻测量值普遍高于理论计算值,说明LED制造工艺水平还有很大的提升空间。     

Uniting Bose-Einstein condensates in optical resonators

The relative phase of two initially independent Bose-Einstein condensates can be laser cooled to unite the two condensates by putting them into a ring cavity and coupling them with an internal Josephson junction. First, we show that this phase cooling process already appears within a semiclassical model. We calculate the stationary states, find regions of bistable behavior, and suggest a Ramsey-type experiment to measure the buildup of phase coherence between the condensates. We also study quantum effects and imperfections of the system.