Thermal Emission of Strontium in a Cryogenic Buffer Gas Beam Source

TL;DR

This paper presents a new laser-heating method for producing cold strontium atoms and molecules in a cryogenic buffer gas beam, achieving higher atom numbers and densities than traditional ablation techniques.

Contribution

It introduces a laser heating technique for SrO in a cryogenic buffer gas source, significantly increasing atomic yield and density compared to ablation methods.

Findings

7-fold increase in Sr atom production per pulse

Doubled atomic density relative to ablation

Potential applicability to other species

Abstract

We demonstrate production of cold atomic strontium (Sr) and strontium-containing molecules (SrOH) in a cryogenic buffer gas beam source via direct heating of strontium oxide (SrO) with 30 mJ laser pulses several milliseconds long. $3.7(2)\times10^{14}$ Sr atoms are released, which represents a factor of 7 increase in atomic production per pulse compared to nanosecond-scale ablation laser pulses. A peak atomic density of $1.93(6) \times 10^{12}$ atoms/cm$^3$ is achieved, which corresponds to a factor of 2 increase relative to ablation. We further propose extensions of this method to other atomic and molecular species.