A new erbium MOT in the T-REQS lab!

After several months of preparations and setting up our system, we have produced our first ultracold atomic cloud of erbium atoms in our new T-REQS lab. After initial slowing down in a Zeeman slower with a broad transition, we trap and cool 166Er atoms in a 5 beam magneto-optical trap operating on the narrow linewidth transition at 583nm. We trap up to 120 million atoms and cool them to ~15 microkelvin in a compressed MOT phase. This is a first step on our way to trapping ultracold erbium atoms in optical tweezers.