Related papers: Efficient tenfold up-conversion through steady-sta…
Frequency up-conversion of few low-energy photons into a single high-energy photon, greatly contributes to imaging, light sources, detection and other fields of research. However, it offers negligible efficiency when up-converting many…
We propose a novel scheme of photon upconversion based on harnessing the energy of plasmonic hot carriers. Low-energy photons excite hot electrons and hot holes in a plasmonic nanoparticle, which are then injected into an adjacent…
Thermal light sources exhibiting photon bunching have been suggested for sensing applications that exploit timing correlations of stationary light, including range finding, clock synchronization, and non-line-of-sight imaging. However,…
A huge amount of thermal energy is available close to material surfaces in radiative and non-radiative states, which can be useful for matter characterization or for energy devices. One way to harness this near-field energy is to scatter it…
A reliable photon source is required for many aspects of quantum technology. Organic molecules are attractive for this application because they can have high quantum yield and can be photostable, even at room temperature. To generate a…
The phenomenon of upconversion, in which a system sequentially absorbs two or more photons and emits a photon of a higher frequency, has been used in numerous applications. These include high-resolution non-destructive bioimaging,…
One photon up-conversion photoluminescence is an optical phenomenon whereby the thermal energy of a fluorescent material increases the energy of an emitted photon compared with the energy of the photon that was absorbed. When this occurs…
A p-n junction maintained at above ambient temperature can work as a heat engine, converting some of the supplied heat into electricity and rejecting entropy by interband emission. Such thermoradiative cells have potential to harvest…
Improving the conversion efficiency of solar energy to electricity is most important to mankind. For single-junction photovoltaic solar-cells, the Shockley-Queisser thermodynamic efficiency limit is extensively due to the heat dissipation,…
Frequency upconversion, which converts low-energy photons into higher-energy ones, typically requires intense coherent illumination to drive nonlinear processes or the use of externally driven optoelectronic devices. Here, we demonstrate an…
Achieving efficient terahertz (THz) generation using compact turn-key sources operating at room temperature and modest power levels represents one of the critical challeges that must be overcome to realize truly practical applications based…
Thermophotovoltaics, devices that convert thermal infrared photons to electricity, offer a key pathway for a variety of critical renewable energy technologies including thermal energy storage, waste heat recovery, and direct solar-thermal…
Photoluminescence (PL) is a fundamental light-matter interaction, which conventionally involves the absorption of energetic photon, thermalization and the emission of a red-shifted photon. Conversely, in optical-refrigeration the absorption…
We demonstrate that electrons can be efficiently accelerated to high energy in spatially non-uniform, intense laser fields. Laser non-uniformities occur when a perfect plane wave reflects off a randomly perturbed surface. By solving for…
Solid-state heat-to-electrical power converters are thermodynamic engines that use fundamental particles, such as electrons or photons, as working fluids. Virtually all commercially available devices are thermoelectric generators, in which…
Single-junction photovoltaic cells are considered to be efficient solar energy converters, but even ideal cells cannot exceed the their fundamental thermodynamic efficiency limit, first analysed by Shockley and Queisser (SQ). For moderated…
Frequency transduction, which converts photons from one energy level to another, provides a way to bridge different quantum devices. The frequency transduction has been studied across various systems and frequency ranges, depending on the…
Electric power may, in principle, be generated in a highly efficient manner from heat created by focused solar irradiation, chemical combustion, or nuclear decay by means of thermionic energy conversion. As the conversion efficiency of the…
Rapid heating of small buried regions by laser generated fast electrons may be useful for applications such as XUV radiation sources or as drivers for shock experiments. In non-structured targets the heating profile possesses a global…
Thermal radiative energy transport is essential for high-temperature energy harvesting technologies, including thermophotovoltaics (TPVs) and grid-scale thermal energy storage. However, the inherently low emissivity of conventional…