Theory of laser cooling of semiconductor quantum wells

We present a microscopic many-body theory of laser cooling of semiconductor quantum wells. The cooling mechanism is the upconversion of pump photons through absorption and subsequent luminescence by an electron-hole-exciton mixture maintained at steady state in the quantum well. Assuming this Coulomb plasma to be in quasi-thermal equilibrium, our theory calculates its absorption/luminescence spectra within a diagrammatic (real-time) Green's function approach at the self-consistent T-matrix level. These spectra are used in a cooling threshold analysis for GaAs quantum wells that also takes into account other losses into heat. We compare the present results with previous ones obtained for bulk GaAs.