Photon cooling: linear vs nonlinear interactions

TL;DR

This paper explores how linear optical interactions inherently prevent photon number decrease due to thermodynamic-like constraints, but nonlinear interactions can reverse this heating, enabling photon cooling in equilibrium systems with different frequencies.

Contribution

It demonstrates that nonlinear interactions can cool photon modes by reversing linear thermodynamic constraints, a novel effect not possible with linear optics alone.

Findings

Linear optics enforces a non-decreasing photon number in initial diagonal states.

Nonlinear interactions can reduce photon numbers, enabling cooling in equilibrium systems.

Cooling efficiency is related to the Manley-Rowe theorem in nonlinear optics.

Abstract

Linear optics imposes a relation that is more general than the second law of thermodynamics: For modes undergoing a linear evolution, the full mean occupation number (i.e. photon number for optical modes) does not decrease, provided that the evolution starts from a (generalized) diagonal state. This relation connects to noise-increasing (or heating), and is akin to the second law and holds for a wide set of initial states. Also, the Bose-entropy of modes increases, though this relation imposes additional limitations on the initial states and on linear evolution. We show that heating can be reversed via nonlinear interactions between the modes. They can cool -- i.e. decrease the full mean occupation number and the related noise -- an equilibrium system of modes provided that their frequencies are different. Such an effect cannot exist in energy cooling, where only a part of an equilibrium system is cooled. We describe the cooling set-up via both efficiency and coefficient of performance and relate the cooling effect to the Manley-Rowe theorem in nonlinear optics.