We investigate the possibility of forming Li+Yb ultracold molecules by magnetoassociation in mixtures of ultracold atoms. We find that magnetically tunable Feshbach resonances exist, but are extremely narrow for even-mass ytterbium isotopes, which all have zero spin. For odd-mass Yb isotopes, however, there is a new mechanism due to hyperfine coupling between the electron spin and the Yb nuclear magnetic moment. This mechanism produces Feshbach resonances for fermionic Yb isotopes that can be more than 2 orders of magnitude larger than for the bosonic counterparts.
We report on the experimental observation of Feshbach resonances in large-mass-imbalance mixtures of erbium (Er) and lithium (Li). All combinations of
168Er,166Er, and
7Li,6Li are cooled to temperatures of a few microkelvin, partially by means of sympathetic cooling together with ytterbium (Yb) as a third mixture component. The Er-Li inelastic interspecies collisional properties are studied for magnetic fields up to
680G. In all cases, resonant interspecies loss features, indicative of Feshbach resonances, have been observed. While most resonances have sub-Gauss widths, a few of them are broad and feature widths of several Gauss. Those broad resonances are a key to the realization of ultracold Er-Li quantum gas mixtures with tunable interactions.