Designing and building a permanent magnet Zeeman slower for calcium atoms using a 3D printer

Abstract

We present the design of a Zeeman slower for calcium atoms using permanent magnets instead of more traditional electromagnets and the novel technique of 3D printing to create a very robust and flexible structure for these magnets. Zeeman slowers are ideal tools to slow atoms from several hundreds of meters per second to just a few tens of meters per second. These slower atoms can then easily be trapped in a magneto-optical trap, making Zeeman slowers a very valuable tool in many cold atom labs. The use of permanent magnets and 3D printing results in a highly stable and robust slower that is suitable for undergraduate laboratories. In our design, we arranged 28 magnet pairs, 2.0 cm apart along the axis of the slower and at varying radial distances from the axis. We determined the radial position of the magnets by simulating the combined field of all magnet pairs using Mathematica and comparing it to the ideal theoretical field for a Zeeman slower. Finally, we designed a stable, robust, compact, and easy-to...