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A compact and efficient strontium oven for laser-cooling experiments

Here we describe a compact and efficient strontium oven well suited for laser-cooling experiments. Novel design solutions allowed us to produce a collimated strontium atomic beam with a flux of 1.0\times10^13 s^-1 cm^-2 at the oven temperature of 450 °C, reached with an electrical power consumption of 36 W. The oven is based on a stainless-steel reservoir, filled with 6 g of metallic strontium, electrically heated in a vacuum environment by a tantalum wire threaded through an alumina multi-bore tube. The oven can be hosted in a standard DN40CF cube and has an estimated continuous operation lifetime of 10 years. This oven can be used for other alkali and alkaline earth metals with essentially no modifications.