Raman cooling in silicon photonic crystals

Laser cooling of solids can be achieved through various photon up-conversion processes including anti-Stokes photoluminescence and anti-Stokes light scattering. While it has been shown that cooling using photoluminescence-based methods can achieve efficiency comparable to that of thermoelectric cooling, the reliance on specific transitions of the rare-earth dopants limits material choice. Light scattering, on the other hand, occurs in all materials, and has the potential to enable cooling in most materials. We show that by engineering the photonic density of states of a material, one can suppress the Stokes process, and enhance the anti-Stokes radiation. We employ the well-known diamond-structured photonic crystal patterned in crystalline silicon to demonstrate theoretically that when operating within a high transparency regime, the net energy removal rate from phonon annihilation can overcome the optical absorption. The engineered photonic density of states can thus enable simultaneous cooling of all Raman-active phonon modes and the net cooling of the solid.