Fifty-fold improvement in the number of quantum degenerate fermionic atoms

TL;DR

This paper reports a fifty-fold increase in the number of quantum degenerate fermionic atoms achieved through sympathetic cooling, along with Bose-Einstein condensation of sodium, marking significant advancements in ultracold atomic physics.

Contribution

It introduces a method to produce a much larger quantum degenerate Fermi gas and demonstrates Bose-Einstein condensation of sodium atoms.

Findings

Fermi gas with up to 7 x 10^7 atoms produced

Fifty-fold improvement over previous experiments

Successful Bose-Einstein condensation of sodium atoms

Abstract

We have produced a quantum degenerate Li-6 Fermi gas with up to 7 x 10^7 atoms, an improvement by a factor of fifty over all previous experiments with degenerate Fermi gases. This was achieved by sympathetic cooling with bosonic Na-23 in the F=2, upper hyperfine ground state. We have also achieved Bose-Einstein condensation of F=2 sodium atoms by direct evaporation.