We have produced ultracold heteronuclear KRb molecules by the process of photoassociation in a two-species magneto-optical trap. Following decay of the photoassociated KRb*, the molecules are detected using two-photon ionization and time-of-flight mass spectroscopy of KRb+. A portion of the metastable triplet molecules thus formed are magnetically trapped. Photoassociative spectra down to 91 cm(-1) below the K(4s)+Rb(5p(1/2)) asymptote have been obtained. We have made assignments to all eight of the attractive Hund's case (c) KRb* potential curves in this spectral region.

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In this paper we report our design and experimental results towards demonstration of a magneto optical trap (MOT)-based cold Cs-beam atomic clock. We generated a continuous cold Cs beam from a Cs MOT by perturbing the MOT potential and measured the longitudinal velocity of the Cs beam to be 7 m/s. In order to separate the atomic beam from the MOT laser beam, we used a onedimensional optical molasses to deflect the Cs beam through an angle of 30 o before the atomic beam enters the microwave cavity. Our Cs beam has an instantaneous atomic flux of 3.6 × 10 10 atoms/s when operated in pulsed mode and a continuous flux of 2 × 10 8 atoms/s. Under current experimental conditions, the observed cold Cs atomic beam parameters infer a shortterm, shot-noise limited Allan standard deviation of 2.7 × 10 -13 τ -1/2 (τ is the averaging time) for the cold Cs beam clock under development.

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