Trapping metastable chromium atoms in a crossed optical dipole trap

We report the fast accumulation of up to 1 million 52 Cr metastable atoms in a mixed trap formed by the superposition of a quadrupolar magnetic trap and a strongly confining optical trap. The cloud is at a temperature of 100  μ K with a peak density of 10 18  atoms/m 3 , which is a promising starting point to reach quantum degeneracy by forced evaporation in an optical trap.