English

Bose-Einstein Condensation of $^{88}$Sr Through Sympathetic Cooling with $^{87}$Sr

Quantum Gases 2012-09-06 v1

Abstract

We report Bose-Einstein condensation of 88^{88}Sr, which has a small, negative s-wave scattering length (a88=2a_{88}=-2\,a0a_0). We overcome the poor evaporative cooling characteristics of this isotope by sympathetic cooling with 87^{87}Sr atoms. 87^{87}Sr is effective in this role in spite of the fact that it is a fermion because of the large ground state degeneracy arising from a nuclear spin of I=9/2I=9/2, which reduces the impact of Pauli blocking of collisions. We observe a limited number of atoms in the condensate (Nmax104N_{max}\approx 10^4) that is consistent with the value of a88a_{88} and the optical dipole trap parameters.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1003.3867,
  title  = {Bose-Einstein Condensation of $^{88}$Sr Through Sympathetic Cooling with $^{87}$Sr},
  author = {P. G. Mickelson and Y. N. Martinez de Escobar and M. Yan and B. J. DeSalvo and T. C. Killian},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1003.3867},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

4 pages, 4 figures