In this paper, we report the rapid and effcient preparation of ultracold erbium atomic samples using all-optical cooling. A multistage cooling process is employed to achieve a large number of low-temperature ultracold erbium atoms. First, the thermal atomic beam is effectively slowed down by transverse cooling, a Zeeman slower, and a broad-line 401 nm pre-cooling laser, then effciently loaded into a narrow-line magneto-optical trap (MOT) operating on the 583 nm transition. The transverse cooling consists of four beams with elliptical spots whose long axes are aligned along the atomic beam direction to reduce the transverse velocity. The Zeeman slower is composed of 11 independent coils, with the currents in the last three coils reversed relative to the other coils to cancel the residual magnetic field near the main vacuum chamber produced by the preceding coils. The pre-cooling laser provides combined longitudinal and transverse deceleration for atoms after the Zeeman slower, bringing the atomic velocity closer to the capture velocity of 583 nm narrow-line MOT and simultaneously making the atoms more convergent at the MOT center, thereby increasing the loading rate into the MOT. To further increase the number of atoms loaded into the 583 nm narrow-line MOT, we apply a sinusoidal frequency modulation at 160 kHz to the 583 nm laser, broadening its line width to 8 MHz, which doubles the trapped atom number. A subsequent compression stage yields a cold atomic cloud of 100(2)×10⁶ atoms at a temperature of 5.4(0.5) μK. This cold cloud is then transferred to a narrow-line MOT operating on the even narrower 841 nm transition for further cooling, producing an ultracold atomic sample of 7.4(0.5)×10⁶ atoms at 900(20)nK.
With the developed techniques, we prepare a large ultracold erbium sample within a total cycle time of 600 ms, providing an effcient cooling platform for fast evaporative cooling and significantly reducing the experimental cycle time. Moreover, without conventional evaporative cooling, this approach can directly load the cold atomic cloud into an optical lattice, providing a key platform for studying many-body physics with strong dipolar interactions and precision measurements. This work offers a feasible reference for cooling rare-earth atoms and provides insights for atomic systems with similar level structures.