An ultracold indium apparatus

Despite the remarkable progress made by ultracold physics in the past few decades, most atomic species have not been cooled to quantum degeneracy. Our work is the first to explore an atom (indium) in main-group III of the Periodic Table at ultracold temperatures.

Due to its anisotropic ground state and level structure, indium contains several important properties that are not found together in existing quantum degenerate gases. Examples include ground state Feshbach resonances, large spin exchange interactions, clock transitions, stable spinor degrees of freedom, and encouraging spin-orbit coupling capabilities.

Here we describe our apparatus for preparing laser cooled indium. This includes blue and UV laser systems, an ultrahigh vacuum chamber, a permanent magnet Zeeman slower, an indium magneto-optical trap, and hardware for sub-Doppler cooling.