Limits to Sympathetic Evaporative Cooling of a Two-Component Fermi Gas

TL;DR

This paper identifies a limit cycle in the evaporative cooling process of a two-component Fermi gas, which prevents reaching the quantum ground state, and suggests potential methods to overcome this obstacle.

Contribution

It introduces a quasi-equilibrium model revealing a limit cycle that obstructs further cooling of fermionic gases and proposes a novel approach involving photoassociation.

Findings

Existence of a limit cycle in evaporative cooling of Fermi gases

Limit cycle prevents reaching the quantum ground state

Potential for further cooling via photoassociating dimers

Abstract

We find a limit cycle in a quasi-equilibrium model of evaporative cooling of a two-component fermion gas. The existence of such a limit cycle represents an obstruction to reaching the quantum ground state evaporatively. We show that evaporatively the \beta\mu ~ 1. We speculate that one may be able to cool an atomic fermi gas further by photoassociating dimers near the bottom of the fermi sea.