Apparatus for a degenerate mixture of Er and Li atoms

We present a new apparatus capable of producing a degenerate mixture of erbium and lithium atoms. The species are generated from a dual-species oven, where the co-propagating atomic beams are then slowed and loaded into magneto-optical traps. The species are then transferred into an optical dipole trap for transport to a nano-textured glass cell. Once in the cell, the species are loaded into a crossed optical dipole trap for evaporation to degeneracy. A high-resolution microscope objective with an NA of 0.6 is used to image the gas. New and exciting physics can be studied using this alkali-lanthanide mixture, including long-range interactions via phonon exchange, mixed dimensional systems, collective spin physics, and few-body phenomena.