Laser cooling and trapping of Yb from a thermal source

We have successfully loaded a magneto-optic trap for Yb atoms from a thermal source without the use of a Zeeman slower. The source is placed close to the trapping region so that it provides a large flux of atoms that can be cooled and captured. The atoms are cooled on the 1S0 ↔ 1P1 transition at 398.8 nm. We have loaded all seven stable isotopes of Yb into the trap. For the most abundant isotope (Yb), we load more than 10 atoms into the trap within 1 s. For the rarest isotope (Yb) with a natural abundance of only 0.13%, we still load about 4 × 10 atoms into the trap. We find that the trap population is maximized near a detuning of −1.5Γ and field gradient of 75 G/cm.