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Gradient Echo Quantum Memory in Warm Atomic Vapor
Published on: November 11, 2013
Quantum-degenerate mixture of fermionic lithium and bosonic rubidium gases
C Silber1, S Günther, C Marzok
1Physikalisches Institut, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 14, D-72076 Tübingen, Germany.
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.
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