An Adaptable Dual Species Effusive Source and Zeeman Slower Design Demonstrated with Rb and Li

TL;DR

This paper introduces a versatile dual-species effusive source and Zeeman slower design capable of producing slow atomic beams for elements with large mass differences, demonstrated with Rb and Li, achieving high MOT loading rates.

Contribution

The authors present a novel, adaptable dual-species Zeeman slower design with segmented coils and thermal separation, enabling efficient slowing of different atomic species with minimal system size.

Findings

Achieved MOT loading rates of 8×10^8 atoms/s for Rb and 1.5×10^8 atoms/s for Li.

Demonstrated the system's ability to operate continuously for 4-10 years based on reservoir lifetimes.

Validated the design's effectiveness with performance comparable to existing dual-species Zeeman slowers.

Abstract

We present a dual-species effusive source and Zeeman slower designed to produce slow atomic beams of two elements with a large mass difference and with very different oven temperature requirements. We demonstrate this design for the case of $^6$Li and $^{85}$Rb and achieve MOT loading rates equivalent to that reported in prior work on dual species (Rb+Li) Zeeman slowers operating at the same oven temperatures. Key design choices, including thermally separating the effusive sources and using a segmented coil design to enable computer control of the magnetic field profile, ensure that the apparatus can be easily modified to slow other atomic species. By performing the final slowing using the quadruple magnetic field of the MOT, we are able to shorten our Zeeman slower length making for a more compact system without compromising performance. We outline the construction and analyze the emission properties of our effusive sources. We also verify the performance of the source and slower, and we observe sequential loading rates of $8 \times 10^8$ atoms/s for a Rb oven temperature of $120\,^{\circ}$C and $1.5 \times 10^8$ atoms/s for a Li reservoir at $450\,^{\circ}$C, corresponding to reservoir lifetimes for continuous operation of 10 and 4 years respectively.