Laser cooling of Er-doped solids

We consider theoretically a mechanism for laser cooling in rare-earth-doped low-phonon materials based simultaneously on two cooling cycles: a traditional cooling cycle with an anti-Stokes fluorescence transition as well as an infrared-to-visible upconversion cycle, to overcome the self-termination effects in either anti-Stokes or upconversion cooling on its own. Our simulations, performed for erbium-doped potassium-lead chloride crystal (Er³⁺:KPl₂Cl₅) known to be an extremely low phonon energy host, uses two pump wavelengths corresponding to the long wavelength tails of the absorption spectra of the ⁴I_15/2 → ⁴I_13/2 and ⁴I_15/2 → ⁴I_9/2 transitions. The contribution of each pump source to the cooling process is comprehensively investigated. We show that, although the energy gap between ⁴I_15/2 and ⁴I_9/2 levels exceeds the energy gap between ⁴I_15/2 and ⁴I_13/2 levels and cooling process is more efficient with the cycle based on the ⁴I_15/2 → ⁴I_13/2 transition, the second cooling cycle based on the ⁴I_15/2 → ⁴I_9/2 transition can be used as a supplementary one.