A Laser Cooled Lithium Beam Source for the Loading of a Magneto-Optical Trap in a Reaction Microscope

A new experiment is being built at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik (MPIK) within the PRIOC project (Precision studies on Ion Collisions) where a reaction microscope (Remi) and a magneto-optical trap (MOT) as target are combined to a so called MOTRemi. This setup will be implemented into the ion storage ring 'Testspeicherring' (TSR) of the MPIK. The world-wide unique combination of these three state-of-the-art technologies shall enable to perform kinematically complete studies of ion-atom collision with unprecedented detail and resolution. In this thesis, a two-dimensional magneto-optical trap (2D-MOT) was developed and tested as a source of slow lithium atoms for the loading of the target MOT. This method allows a very compact setup and oers a collimated beam and a ux of cold atoms comparable to the highest uxes achieved by using laser cooling. The temperature of the atomic beam was determined to be at the scale of a few Kelvin and, thus, it is already an adequate stand-alone target for momentum resolved experiments