Ultracold collisions in the Yb-Li mixture system

TL;DR

This study explores the collisional physics of Yb and Li atoms in ultracold mixtures, revealing how spin states and magnetic fields influence inelastic losses, advancing control over impurity physics in such systems.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of magnetic field and spin state dependence of inelastic collisions in the Yb-Li mixture system.

Findings

Inelastic losses depend strongly on spin states at low magnetic fields.

Losses are suppressed in stretched state configurations.

Inelastic losses increase smoothly with magnetic field up to 800 G.

Abstract

We report our experimental results on the collisional physics between non-S-state atoms (ytterbium (Yb), effectively a two-electron system, in the metastable ${}^3\mathrm{P}_2$ state) and S-state atoms (lithium (Li), an alkali metal, in the ground state). At low magnetic fields, by measuring inelastic interspecies collisional losses in the double quantum degenerate mixture we reveal the strong dependence of the inelastic losses on the internal spin states of both species and suppressed losses in stretched state configurations. Increasing the magnetic field up to 800 G we further investigate the magnetic field dependence of the collisional interactions. There, smoothly increasing inelastic losses are observed towards higher fields. The combined knowledge of both the magnetic field and the spin state dependence of the collisional losses of this prototypical mixture system of non-S-state and S-state atoms provides a significant step forward towards controllable impurity physics realized in the Yb-Li ultracold system.