We report on magneto-optical trapping of fermionic 53 Cr atoms. A Zeeman-slowed atomic beam provides loading rates up to 3 ϫ 10 6 s −1 . We present systematic characterization of the magneto-optical trap ͑MOT͒. We obtain up to 5 ϫ 10 5 atoms in the steady-state MOT. The atoms radiatively decay from the excited P state into metastable D states, and, due to the large dipolar magnetic moment of chromium atoms in these states, they can remain magnetically trapped in the quadrupole field gradient of the MOT. We study the accumulation of metastable 53 Cr atoms in this magnetic trap. We also report on the simultaneous magneto-optical trapping of bosonic 52 Cr and fermionic 53 Cr atoms. Finally, we characterize the light-assisted collision losses in this Bose-Fermi cold mixture.

We report the fast accumulation of a large number of metastable 52 Cr atoms in a mixed trap, formed by the superposition of a strongly confining optical trap and a quadrupolar magnetic trap. The steady state is reached after about 400 ms, providing a cloud of more than one million metastable atoms at a temperature of about 100 µK, with a peak density of 10 18 atoms.m −3 . We have optimized the loading procedure, and measured the light shift of the 5 D4 state by analyzing how the trapped atoms respond to a parametric excitation. We compare this result to a theoretical evaluation based on the available spectroscopic data for chromium atoms.