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
radiation 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 optical pumped metastable state. The velocity
distribution at the exit of the Zeeman slower is obtained from a probe laser crossing the atom 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
1950 K. Our laser radiations are stabilized using standard saturated-absorption signals in both an Iron
hollow cathode absorption cell and an Iodine cell. We will present our experimental setup, as well as
the first evidences of cooled down Iron atoms at the exit of the Zeeman slower.