Trapping and Cooling a ^40K Fermi Gas

Zi‐Liang Li, Zhengyu Gu, Zhenlian Shi +2 more

We report a compact experimental setup for producing a quantum degenerate mixture of Bose 23Na and Fermi 40K gases. The atoms are collected in dual dark magneto–optical traps (MOT) with species timesharing loading to reduce the light-induced loss, and then further cooled using the gray molasses technique on the D 2 line for 23Na and D 1 line for 40K. The microwave evaporation cooling is used to cool 23Na in | F = 2,mF = 2〉 in an optically plugged magnetic trap, meanwhile, 40K in | F = 9/2,mF = 9/2〉 is sympathetically cooled. Then the mixture is loaded into a large volume optical dipole trap where 23Na atoms are immediately transferred to |1,1〉 for further effective cooling to avoid the strong three-body loss between 23Na atoms in |2,2〉 and 40K atoms in |9/2,9/2〉. At the end of the evaporation in optical trap, a degenerate Fermi gas of 40K with 1.9 × 105 atoms at T/TF = 0.5 in the |9/2,9/2〉 hyperfine state coexists with a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) of 23Na with 8 × 104 atoms in the |1,1〉 hyperfine state at 300 nK. We also can produce the two species mixture with the tunable population imbalance by adjusting the 23Na magneto–optical trap loading time.

M. Ya. Amusia, Vasily R. Shaginyan

M. Taglieber, A.-C. Voigt, T. Aoki +2 more

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.

Peibo Ding, Biao Shan, Yuhang 宇航 Zhao 赵 +5 more

We report on the optimal production of the Bose and Fermi mixtures with 87Rb and 40K in a crossed optical dipole trap (ODT). We measure the atomic number and lifetime of the mixtures in combination of the spin state |F = 9/2, m F = 9/2〉 of 40K and |1, 1〉 of 87Rb in the ODT, which is larger and longer compared with the combination of the spin state |9/2, 9/2〉 of 40K and |2, 2〉 of 87Rb in the ODT. We observe the atomic numbers of 87Rb and 40K shown in each stage of the sympathetic cooling process while gradually reducing the depth of the optical trap. By optimizing the relative loading time of atomic mixtures in the MOT, we obtain the large atomic number of 40K (∼6 × 106) or the mixtures of atoms with an equal number (∼1.6 × 106) at the end of evaporative cooling in the ODT. We experimentally investigate the evaporative cooling in an enlarged volume of the ODT via adding a third laser beam to the crossed ODT and found that more atoms (8 × 106) and higher degeneracy (T/T F = 0.25) of Fermi gases are obtained. The ultracold atomic gas mixtures pave the way to explore phenomena such as few-body collisions and the Bose–Fermi Hubbard model, as well as for creating ground-state molecules of 87Rb40K.

M.Ya. Amusia, A.Z. Msezane, Vasily R. Shaginyan