Towards Sawtooth Wave Adiabatic Passage in a grating magneto optical trap

Cold alkaline-earth atoms are a promising platform for a variety of mobile quantum technologies, such as atomic clocks and interferometers. Most alkaline-earth experiments use a 6-beam magneto-optical trap (MOT) for initial cooling and trapping, which requires a large optical setup, limiting fieldability. One alternative to the typical 6-beam MOT is a grating MOT, which uses one input laser beam and a nanofabricated diffraction grating to create the rest of the trap. We report our realization of a broad-line grating MOT of ⁸⁷Sr. We also report on progress towards implementing sawtooth wave adiabatic passage (SWAP) in a non-orthogonal beam geometry. SWAP assisted cooling simplifies the realization of a narrow-line grating MOT with ⁸⁷Sr and enhances capture of bosonic isotopes. Realization of an intercombination-line grating MOT with ⁸⁷Sr is an important step towards compact clocks and interferometers using alkaline-earth atoms.