The authors report the realization of a mixture of atomic Bose-Einstein condensates of highly magnetic erbium and nonmagnetic ytterbium by a sympathetic cooling method. The measurement of the trap lifetime of the mixture shows good collisional stability against three-body losses.
We report the realization of quantum degenerate mixed gases of ytterbium (Yb) isotopes using all-optical methods. We have succeeded in cooling attractively interacting 176Yb atoms via sympathetic cooling down to below the Bose-Einstein transition temperature, coexisting with a stable condensate of 174Yb atoms with a repulsive interaction. We have observed a rapid atom loss in 176Yb atoms after cooling down below the transition temperature, which indicates the collapse of a 176Yb condensate. The sympathetic cooling technique has been applied to cool a $^{173}\mathrm{Yb}\text{\ensuremath{-}}^{174}\mathrm{Yb}$ Fermi-Bose mixture to the quantum degenerate regime.
We have produced a quantum degenerate mixture of fermionic alkali-metal 6Li and bosonic spin-singlet 174Yb gases. This was achieved using sympathetic cooling of lithium atoms by evaporatively cooled ytterbium atoms in a far-off-resonant optical dipole trap. We observe the coexistence of Bose-condensed ($T/{T}_{\mathrm{c}}\ensuremath{\simeq}0.8$) 174Yb with $2.3\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{4}$ atoms and Fermi degenerate ($T/{T}_{\mathrm{F}}\ensuremath{\simeq}0.3$) 6Li with $1.2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{4}$ atoms. Quasipure Bose-Einstein condensates of up to $3\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{4}$ 174Yb atoms can be produced in single-species experiments. Our results mark a significant step toward studies of few- and many-body physics with mixtures of alkali-metal and alkaline-earth-metal-like atoms, and for the production of paramagnetic polar molecules in the quantum regime. Our methods also establish a convenient scheme for producing quantum degenerate ytterbium atoms in a 1064 nm optical dipole trap.
We report the realization of a degenerate mixture of 166Er and 7Li atoms in their energetically lowest spin states. The two species are sequentially laser-cooled and loaded into an optical dipole trap, then transported to a glass cell and simultaneously evaporated to degeneracy. Er serves as the coolant for Li, and we observe efficient sympathetic cooling facilitated by a large interspecies elastic scattering cross section. Three-body losses are found to be small, making this platform promising for the study of interacting mixtures with large mass imbalance.
We report on the generation of a quantum degenerate Fermi-Fermi mixture of two different atomic species. The quantum degenerate mixture is realized employing sympathetic cooling of fermionic 6Li and 40K gases by an evaporatively cooled bosonic 87Rb gas. We describe the combination of trapping and cooling methods that proved crucial to successfully cool the mixture. In particular, we study the last part of the cooling process and show that the efficiency of sympathetic cooling of the 6Li gas by 87Rb is increased by the presence of 40K through catalytic cooling. Because of the differing physical properties of the two components, the quantum degenerate 6Li-40K Fermi-Fermi mixture is an excellent candidate for a stable, heteronuclear system allowing the study of several so far unexplored types of quantum matter.
Abstract We report a new apparatus for the study of two-species quantum degenerate mixture of 41 K and 6 Li atoms. We develop and combine several advanced cooling techniques to achieve both a large atom number and high phase space density of the two-species atom clouds. Furthermore, we build a high efficiency two-species magnetic transport system to transfer atom clouds from the 3D magneto-optical-trap chamber to a full glass science chamber of an extreme high vacuum environment and good optical access. We perform a forced radio-frequency evaporative cooling for 41 K atoms while the 6 Li atoms are sympathetically cooled in an optically plugged magnetic trap. Finally, we achieve the simultaneous quantum degeneracy for the 41 K and 6 Li atoms. The Bose–Einstein condensate of 41 K has 1.4 × 10 5 atoms with a condensate fraction of about 62%, while the degenerate Fermi gas of 6 Li has a total atom number of 5.4 × 10 5 at 0.25 Fermi temperature.