Quantum-Degenerate Mixture of Fermionic Lithium and Bosonic Rubidium Gases

2005/06/30 by C. Silber, S. Guenther, S. Günther +4 · 130 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Atomic physics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Condensed matter physics #Degenerate energy levels #Lithium (medication) #Materials science #Physics #Potassium #Quantum #Quantum mechanics #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #Rubidium #cond-mat.stat-mech

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.95.170408

published in Physical Review Letters 95(17), 170408 (American Physical Society) · 4 pages, 3 figures

arxiv created 2005/09/27 · openalex publication_date 2005/10/20 · arxiv updated 2015/06/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We report on the observation of sympathetic cooling of a cloud of fermionic 6Li atoms which are thermally coupled to evaporatively cooled bosonic 87Rb. Using this technique we obtain a mixture of quantum-degenerate gases, where the Rb cloud is colder than the critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation and the Li cloud is colder than the Fermi temperature. From measurements of the thermalization velocity we estimate the interspecies s-wave triplet scattering length |amx|=20(+9)(-6)aB. We found that the presence of residual rubidium atoms in the |2, 1> and the |1, -1> Zeeman substates gives rise to important losses due to inelastic collisions.

Citations

• Expansion of a lithium gas in the BEC-BCS crossover
• Understanding the production of dual Bose-Einstein condensation with sympathetic cooling
• Ultracold Collisions Involving Heteronuclear Alkali Metal Dimers
• Mean-field instability of trapped dilute boson-fermion mixtures
• Formation of Quantum-Degenerate Sodium Molecules
• Scattering parameters for cold Li–Rb and Na–Rb collisions derived from variable phase theory
• Component separation in harmonically trapped boson-fermion mixtures
• Saturation in heteronuclear photoassociation of6Li7Li
• Bose-Einstein Condensation in a Surface Microtrap
• Observation of Fermi Pressure in a Gas of Trapped Atoms
• Production and State-Selective Detection of Ultracold RbCs Molecules
• Weakly Bound Dimers of Fermionic Atoms
• Observation of Feshbach Resonances between Two Different Atomic Species
• Production of Long-Lived UltracoldLi2Molecules from a Fermi Gas
• Influence of Induced Interactions on the Superfluid Transition in Dilute Fermi Gases
• Sympathetic Cooling with Two Atomic Species in an Optical Trap
• Bose-Einstein Condensation of Molecules
• Observation of Bose-Einstein Condensation of Molecules