Magneto-optical trapping of optically pumped metastable europium

Abstract

We demonstrate laser cooling and magneto-optical trapping of europium. The atoms are optically pumped to a metastable state and then loaded from an atomic-beam source via conventional Zeeman slowing and magneto-optical trapping techniques using a $J=13/2\leftrightarrow J=15/2$ quasi-cyclic transition. The trapped populations contained up to $1\times 10^7$ atoms, and a two-body loss rate is estimated as $1\times10^{-10}\,\mathrm{cm^3/s}$ from the non-exponential loss of atoms at high densities. We also observed leakage out of the quasi-cyclic transition to the two metastable states with $J=9/2$ and $11/2$, which is adequate to pump the laser-cooled atoms back to the $J=7/2$ ground state.