Laser-cooling Cadmium Bosons and Fermions with Near Ultraviolet Triplet Excitations

Cadmium is laser-cooled and trapped with excitations to triplet states with UVA light, first using only the 67 kHz wide 326 nm intercombination line and subsequently, for large loading rates, the 25 MHz wide 361 nm 3P2 → 3D3 transition. Eschewing the hard UV 229 nm 1S0 → 1P1 transition, only small magnetic fields gradients, less than 6 G cm-1, are required enabling a 100% transfer of atoms from the 361 nm trap to the 326 nm narrow-line trap. All 8 stable cadmium isotopes are straightforwardly trapped, including two nuclear-spin-12 fermions that require no additional repumping. We observe evidence of 3P2 collisions limiting the number of trapped metastable atoms, report isotope shifts for 111Cd and 113Cd of the 326 nm 1S0 → 3P1, 480nm 3P1 → 3S1, and 361 nm 3P2 → 3D3 transitions, and measure the 114Cd 5s5p 3P2 → 5s5d 3D3 transition frequency to be 830 096 573(15) MHz.