Progress towards a high temperature inductive oven for an ultracold Er+Na mixture experiment

One of the major challenges in an ultracold atom experiment is the production of the atomic beam for laser cooling. Atomic species of recent interest such as Er, Dy, Cr present a particular challenge in that they require very high temperatures (upwards of 1000 C) to produce vapor pressures suitable for the generation of a thermal atomic beam. In recent experiments, this challenge has been addressed by using a commercial oven in conjunction with a Zeeman slower. Here we present progress towards an inductive oven for Er. Inductive heating, as opposed to resistive heating, offers the distinct advantage of heating the sample directly, eliminating the need for bulky water cooling stages of conventional high temperature ovens. Additionally, the inductive oven's compact design enables it to serve as a transverse source in a two species 2D MOT setup.