Towards Bose-Einstein condensation of Erbium atoms

Ultracold dipolar gases offer a promising playground for exploring a wide variety of novel quantum phases as well as quantum magnetism. Recent advances in laser cooling technique have opened up a possibility to reach ultracold temperature with highly magnetic rare-earth atoms. Here, we present our results towards Bose-Einstein condensation of Erbium atoms. By using a broad transition at 401 nm for Zeeman slowing and a narrow transition at 583 nm for a magneto-optical trap (MOT), we obtained up to $3\times 10^8$ atoms at a temperature of 15 $\mu $K. Typically $1\times 10^7$ atoms are directly loaded from a MOT into an optical dipole trap operating at 1064 nm. The results show that our approach gives a good starting condition for evaporative cooling.