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-1/2 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, $480\,$nm ³P₁\,→\,³S₁, and $361\,$nm ³P₂\,→\,³D₃ transitions, and measure the ¹¹⁴Cd 5s5p\,³P₂\,→\,$5s5d$\,^3D_3$ transition frequency to be $830\,096\,573(15)\,$MHz.