Quantum Degenerate Mixture of Ytterbium and Lithium Atoms

TL;DR

This paper reports the creation of a quantum degenerate mixture of fermionic lithium and bosonic ytterbium atoms, demonstrating a new platform for exploring many-body physics and molecule formation in ultracold gases.

Contribution

The authors successfully produce a mixed quantum degenerate gas of 6Li and 174Yb using sympathetic cooling in an optical dipole trap, a novel combination for such experiments.

Findings

Achieved co-existence of Bose-Einstein condensate of 174Yb and Fermi degenerate 6Li.

Produced Bose-Einstein condensates of up to 3×10^4 ytterbium atoms.

Established a method for creating quantum degenerate ytterbium in a 1064nm optical trap.

Abstract

We have produced a quantum degenerate mixture of fermionic alkali 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 co-existence of Bose condensed (T/T_c~0.8) 174Yb with 2.3*10^4 atoms and Fermi degenerate (T/T_F~0.3) 6Li with 1.2*10^4 atoms. Quasipure Bose-Einstein condensates of up to 3*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 and alkaline-earth-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 1064nm optical dipole trap.