Superconducting quantum refrigerator: Breaking and rejoining Cooper pairs with magnetic field cycles

Abstract

We propose a solid state refrigeration technique based on repeated adiabatic magnetization/demagnetization cycles of a superconductor which acts as the working substance. The gradual cooling down of a substrate (normal metal) in contact with the working substance is demonstrated for different initial temperatures of the substrate. Excess heat is given to a hot large-gap superconductor. The on-chip refrigerator works in a cyclic manner because of an effective thermal switching mechanism: Heat transport between N/N versus N/S junctions is asymmetric because of the appearance of the energy gap. This switch permits selective cooling of the metal. We find that this refrigeration technique can cool down a 0.3cm$^{3}$ block of Cu by almost two orders of magnitude starting from 200mK, and down to about 1mK starting from the base temperature of a dilution fridge (10mK). The corresponding cooling power for a 1cm$\times$1cm interface are 25 nW and 0.06 nW respectively, which scales with the area of the interface.