The capture of a moving atom by a non-dissipative trap, such as an opticaldipole trap, requires the removal of the excessive kinetic energy of the atom.In this article we develop a mechanism to harvest ultra cold atoms from aguided atom beam into an optical dipole trap by removing their directed kineticenergy. We propose a continuous loading scheme where this is accomplished viadeceleration by a magnetic potential barrier followed by optical pumping to theenergetically lowest Zeeman sublevel. We theoretically investigate theapplication of this scheme to the transfer of ultra cold chromium atoms from amagnetically guided atom beam into a deep optical dipole trap. We discuss therealization of a suitable magnetic field configuration. Based on numericalsimulations of the loading process we analyze the feasibility and efficiency ofour loading scheme.
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