Loading of the narrow line Tm MOT from a pulsed cold atomic beam

TL;DR

This paper presents a pulsed cold atomic beam source of Tm atoms and a method to efficiently load a narrow-line MOT, reducing preparation time for spectroscopy experiments and applicable to other atomic species.

Contribution

Introduces a pulsed Tm atomic beam source and a novel axial cooling method to enhance narrow-line MOT loading efficiency, applicable to similar atomic species.

Findings

Achieved a loading rate of 10^8 atoms/s in the primary MOT.

Developed a pulsed atomic beam with mean velocity ~10 m/s.

Demonstrated 10% loading efficiency into the second-stage MOT.

Abstract

We report on building a pulsed source of cold Tm atoms and loading of the narrow-line magnito-optical trap (MOT) from the cold atomic beam. We achieve the loading rate of the first-stage MOT in the primary chamber up to $10^8$ atoms/s and obtain a cold atomic beam with the mean longitudinal velocity $\sim10$ m/s and angular spread of 18 mrad in a pulsed mode. We also introduce a novel method to enhance the capture velocity of the narrow-line MOT by incorporating additional axial cooling beam, and achieve loading efficiency $\eta = 10\%$ of the second-stage MOT in the science chamber. Our approach could be extended to other atomic species with similar properties, like Sr, Yb, Dy and Er, serving as a convenient alternative for the traditional 2D-MOT schemes. Providing rapid loading of the MOT in the science chamber, it would reduce preparation time of the atomic ensemble leading to a shorter dead time in spectroscopy experiments and higher repetition rate.