2010/05/21 by Shintaro Taie, Yosuke Takasu, Seiji Sugawa +4 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.quant-gas #physics.atom-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.105.190401
published as PRL 105, 190401 (2010) · 4 pages, 5 figures V2: revised references
arxiv created 2010/05/21 · arxiv updated 2012/08/27
We report the realization of a novel degenerate Fermi mixture with an SU(2)*SU(6) symmetry in a cold atomic gas. We successfully cool the mixture of the two fermionic isotopes of ytterbium 171Yb with the nuclear spin I=1/2 and 173Yb with I=5/2 below the Fermi temperature T_ F as 0.46TF for 171Yb and 0.54TF for 173Yb. The same scattering lengths for different spin components make this mixture featured with the novel SU(2)*SU(6) symmetry. The nuclear spin components are separately imaged by exploiting an optical Stern-Gerlach effect. In addition, the mixture is loaded into a 3D optical lattice to implement the SU(2)*SU(6) Hubbard model. This mixture will open the door to the study of novel quantum phases such as a spinor Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer-like fermionic superfluid.