Production of a highly degenerate Fermi gas of metastable helium-3 atoms

TL;DR

This paper reports the creation of a highly degenerate Fermi gas of metastable helium-3 atoms through sympathetic cooling in a Bose-Fermi mixture, enabling advanced experiments with single atom detection.

Contribution

Demonstrated quantum degeneracy in a metastable helium-3 Fermi gas using a simplified cooling technique in a Bose-Fermi mixture.

Findings

Achieved a degenerate Fermi gas with T/T_F=0.14

Produced a sample of 2.5 x 10^4 helium-3 atoms

Enabled single atom detection due to high internal energy

Abstract

We report on the achievement of quantum degeneracy in both components of a Bose-Fermi mixture of metastable helium atoms, $^4$He* and $^3$He*. Degeneracy is achieved via Doppler cooling and forced evaporation for $^4$He*, and sympathetically cooling $^3$He* with $^4$He*. We discuss our simplified implementation, along with the high versatility of our system. This technique is able to produce a degenerate Fermi gas with a minimum reduced temperature of $T/T_F=0.14(1)$, consisting of $2.5 \times 10^4$ $^3$He* atoms. Due to the high internal energy of both isotopes single atom detection is possible, opening the possibility of a large number of experiments into Bose-Fermi mixtures.