UC Berkeley

We realize a magneto-optical trap (MOT) of titanium (Ti) atoms, performing laser cooling on the 498 nm transition between the long-lived metastable state and the excited state. Without the addition of any repumping light, we observe MOTs of the three stable, bosonic isotopes, , and . Up to atoms are trapped at a maximum density of and at a temperature of . By measuring the decay of the MOT, we constrain the leakage branching ratio of the cooling transition ( ) and the two-body loss coefficient ( ). Our approach to laser cooling Ti can be applied to other transition metals, enabling a significant expansion of the elements that can be laser cooled.