William Dowd

Quantum Degenerate Mixture of Ytterbium and Lithium Atoms

We have produced a quantum degenerate mixture of fermionic alkali-metal {sup 6}Li and bosonic spin-singlet {sup 174}Yb gases. This was achieved using sympathetic cooling of lithium atoms by evaporatively cooled ytterbium atoms in a far-off-resonant optical dipole trap. We observe the coexistence of Bose-condensed (T/T{sub c}{approx_equal}0.8) {sup 174}Yb with 2.3x10{sup 4} atoms and Fermi degenerate (T/T{sub F}{approx_equal}0.3) {sup 6}Li with 1.2x10{sup 4} atoms. Quasipure Bose-Einstein condensates of up to 3x10{sup 4} {sup 174}Yb atoms can be produced in single-species experiments. Our results mark a significant step toward studies of few- and many-body physics with mixtures of alkali-metal and alkaline-earth-metal-like atoms, and for the production of paramagnetic polar molecules in the quantum regime. Our methods also establish a convenient scheme for producing quantum degenerate ytterbium atoms in a 1064 nm optical dipole trap.

Sympathetic cooling in an optically trapped mixture of alkali and spin-singlet atoms.

We report on the realization of a stable mixture of ultracold lithium and ytterbium atoms confined in a far-off-resonance optical dipole trap. We observe sympathetic cooling of 6Li by 174Yb and extract the s-wave scattering length magnitude |a(6Li-174Yb)|=(13±3)a0 from the rate of interspecies thermalization. Using forced evaporative cooling of 174Yb, we achieve reduction of the 6Li temperature to below the Fermi temperature, purely through interspecies sympathetic cooling.

Production of quantum degenerate mixtures of ytterbium and lithium with controllable inter-species overlap

Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA(Dated: January 23, 2013)Quantum-degenerate mixtures of one-electron and two-electron atoms form the starting point forstudying few- and many-body physics of mass-imbalanced pairs as well as the production of param-agnetic polar molecules. We recently reported the achievement of dual-species quantum degeneracyof a mixture of lithium and ytterbium atoms. Here we present details of the key experimental stepsfor the all-optical preparation of these mixtures. Further, we demonstrate the use of the magneticfield gradient tool to compensate for the differential gravitational sag of the two species and controltheir spatial overlap.I. INTRODUCTION

Dynamics of Feshbach molecules in an ultracold three-component mixture

We present investigations of the formation rate and collisional stability of lithium Feshbach molecules in an ultracold three-component mixture composed of two resonantly interacting fermionic

Magnetic field dependent interactions in an ultracold Li?Yb(3P2) mixture

{}^{6}

Ultracold Heteronuclear Mixture of Ground and Excited State Atoms

Li spin states and bosonic

Field dependent studies of inelastic scattering properties in an ultracold mixture of lithium and metastable ytterbium

{}^{174}

Combining Ultracold Quantum Gases of Ytterbium and Lithium Atoms

Yb. We observe long molecule lifetimes (

Collisional studies of an ultracold mixture of lithium and excited state ytterbium atoms

g100

Ultracold Mixture of Lithium and Metastable Ytterbium Atoms

ms) even in the presence of a large ytterbium bath and extract reaction rate coefficients of the system. We find good collisional stability of the mixture in the unitary regime, opening new possibilities for studies and probes of strongly interacting quantum gases in contact with a bath species.