Electron beam driven alkali metal atom source for loading a magneto-optical trap in a cryogenic environment

We present a versatile and compact electron beam driven source for alkali metal atoms, which can be imple- mented in cryostats. With a heat load of less than 10 mW, the heat dissipation normalized to the atoms loaded into the magneto-optical trap (MOT) is about a factor 1000 smaller than for a typical alkali metal dispenser. The measured lin- ear scaling of the MOT loading rate with electron current observed in the experiments indicates that electron stimu- lated desorption is the corresponding mechanism to release the atoms