  We present a design for an atomic oven suitable for loading ion traps, which
is operated via optical heating with a continuous-wave multimode diode laser.
The absence of the low-resistance electrical connections necessary for Joule
heating allows the oven to be extremely well thermally isolated from the rest
of the vacuum system, and for an oven filled with calcium we achieve a number
density suitable for rapid ion loading in the target region with ~200 mW of
laser power, limited by radiative losses. With simple feedforward to the laser
power, the turn-on time for the oven is less than 20 s, while the oven contains
enough calcium to operate continuously for many thousands of years without
replenishment.
