New mechanism of current-induced cooling of quantum systems

A new mechanism of current-induced cooling of heterostructures is proposed and studied. As an example, a structure with two quantum wells was taken to determine the conditions under which electric current can flow in the situation where electrons and holes transfer from one well to another via indirect phonon-assisted tunneling. It is shown that this system can be used to create an inverse electron and hole population and simultaneously cool the laser active region by injection current. The universal relation is obtained according to which the cooling temperature of a quantum system is expressed only in terms of energy difference between the carrier size-quantization levels.