Combining the ideas of laser cooling and thermionic cooling, we have proposed an opto-thermionic cooling process, and investigated its cooling effect caused by the light emission from a quantum well embedded into a semiconductor $\mathrm{pn}$ junction. For a GaAs/AlGaAs opto-thermionic refregerator in which the Auger recombination is the major nonradiative process, cooling can be achieved in a finite range of bias voltage. Using the measured values of the Auger coefficient, our calculated cooling rate is at least several $\mathrm{watts}/{\mathrm{cm}}^2$.

• Received 5 April 2001

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.5570