Quantum-Degenerate Mixture of Fermionic Lithium and Bosonic Rubidium Gases
C. Silber, S. Günther, C. Marzok +3 more
We report on the observation of sympathetic cooling of a cloud of fermionic 6Li atoms which are thermally coupled to evaporatively cooled bosonic 87Rb. Using this technique we obtain a mixture of quantum-degenerate gases, where the Rb cloud is colder than the critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation and the Li cloud is colder than the Fermi temperature. From measurements of the thermalization velocity we estimate the interspecies s-wave triplet scattering length |amx|=20(+9)(-6)aB. We found that the presence of residual rubidium atoms in the |2, 1> and the |1, -1> Zeeman substates gives rise to important losses due to inelastic collisions.
arXiv:cond-mat/0506217•Physical Review Letters•Oct 20, 2005•133 citations