We present a dual-species oven and Zeeman slower setup capable of producing slow, high-flux atomic beams for loading magneto-optical traps. Our compact and versatile system is based on electronic switching between different magnetic field profiles and is applicable to a wide range of multi-species experiments. We give details of the vacuum setup, coils, and simple electronic circuitry. In addition, we demonstrate the performance of our system by optimized, sequential loading of magneto-optical traps of lithium-6 and cesium-133.

Abstract. We report enhanced three-dimensional degenerated Raman sideband cooling (3D DRSC) of caesium (Cs) atoms in a standard single-cell vapour-loading magneto-optical trap. Our improved scheme involves using a separate repumping laser and optimized lattice detuning. We load 1.5 × 10 7 atoms into the Raman lattice with a detuning of -15.5 GHz (to the ground F = 3 state). Enhanced 3D DRSC is used to cool them from 60 µK to 1.7 µK within 12 ms and the number of obtained atoms is about 1.2 × 10 7 . A theoretical model is proposed to simulate the measured number of trapped atoms. The result shows good agreement with the experimental data. The technique paves the way for loading a large number of ultracold Cs atoms into a crossed dipole trap and efficient evaporative cooling in a single-cell system.

Hybrid quantum devices, incorporating both atoms and photons, can exploit the benefits of both to enable scalable architectures for quantum computing and quantum communication, as well as chip-scale sensors and single-photon sources. Production of such devices depends on the development of an interface between their atomic and photonic components. This should be compact, robust, and compatible with existing technologies from both fields. Here we demonstrate such an interface. Cold cesium atoms are trapped inside a transverse, 30 μm-diameter through hole in an optical fiber, created via laser micromachining. When the guided light is on resonance with the cesium D 2 line, up to 87% of it is absorbed by the atoms. The corresponding optical depth per unit length is ∼700 cm −1 , higher than any reported for a comparable system. This is important for miniaturization and scalability. The technique can be equally effective in optical waveguide chips and other existing photonic systems, providing a promising platform for fundamental research.

We describe the design, construction and characterisation of a collimated, dual-species oven source for generating intense beams of lithium and caesium in UHV environments. Our design produces full beam overlap for the two species. Using an aligned microtube array the FWHM of the output beam is restricted to ∼ 75 milliradians, with an estimated axial brightness of 3.6×10 14 atoms s −1 sr −1 for Li and 7.4×10 15 atoms s −1 sr −1 for Cs. We measure the properties of the output beam using a spatially-resolved fluorescence technique, which allows for the extraction of additional information not accessible without spatial resolution.