Electron beam driven alkali metal atom source for loading a magneto-optical trap in a cryogenic environment

TL;DR

This paper introduces a compact electron beam driven alkali metal atom source suitable for cryogenic environments, significantly reducing heat load and enabling efficient MOT loading via electron stimulated desorption.

Contribution

It presents a novel, low-heat, electron beam driven atom source for MOTs in cryogenic setups, demonstrating effective atom release with minimal thermal impact.

Findings

Heat load less than 10mW per atom source

MOT loading rate scales linearly with electron current

Electron stimulated desorption is the atom release mechanism

Abstract

We present a versatile and compact electron beam driven source for alkali metal atoms, which can be implemented in cryostats. With a heat load of less than 10mW, the heat dissipation normalized to the atoms loaded into the magneto-optical Trap (MOT), is about a factor 1000 smaller than for a typical alkali metal dispenser. The measured linear scaling of the MOT loading rate with electron current observed in the experiments, indicates that electron stimulated desorption is the corresponding mechanism to release the atoms.