Laser Cooling of Iron Atoms

We report on the first laser cooling of Iron atoms. Our laser cooling setup makes use of 2 UV laser radiations sent colinearly in a 0.8 m Zeeman slower. One laser is meant for optical pumping of the Iron atoms from the ground state to the lowest energy metastable state. The second laser cools down the atoms using a quasi-perfect closed transition from the optically pumped metastable state. The velocity distribution at the exit of the Zeeman slower is obtained from a probe laser crossing the atomic beam at an angle of 50 degrees. The fluorescence light is detected using a photomultiplier tube coupled with a boxcar analyzer. The Iron atom beam is produced with a commercial effusion cell working at around 1600°C. Our laser radiations are stabilized using standard saturated-absorption signals in both an Iron hollow cathode absorption cell and an Iodine cell.