Exciton-mediated photothermal cooling in GaAs membranes

Cooling of the mechanical motion of a GaAs nano-membrane using the photothermal effect mediated by excitons was recently demonstrated by some of us [K. Usami, et al., Nature Phys. 8, 168 (2012)] and provides a clear example of the use of thermal forces to cool down mechanical motion. Here, we report on a single-free-parameter theoretical model to explain the results of this experiment which matches the experimental data remarkably well.