Rapid sympathetic cooling to Fermi degeneracy on a chip
Abstract
Neutral fermions present new opportunities for testing many-body condensed matter systems, realizing precision atom interferometry, producing ultra-cold molecules, and investigating fundamental forces. However, since their first observation, quantum degenerate Fermi gases (DFGs) have continued to be challenging to produce, and have been realized in only a handful of laboratories. In this Letter, we report the production of a DFG using a simple apparatus based on a microfabricated magnetic trap. Similar approaches applied to Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC) of 87Rb have accelerated evaporative cooling and eliminated the need for multiple vacuum chambers. We demonstrate sympathetic cooling for the first time in a microtrap, and cool 40K to Fermi degeneracy in just six seconds -- faster than has been possible in conventional magnetic traps. To understand our sympathetic cooling trajectory, we measure the temperature dependence of the 40K-87Rb cross-section and observe its Ramsauer-Townsend reduction.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0512518,
title = {Rapid sympathetic cooling to Fermi degeneracy on a chip},
author = {S. Aubin and S. Myrskog and M. H. T. Extavour and L. J. LeBlanc and D. McKay and A. Stummer and J. H. Thywissen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0512518},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
5 pages, 4 figures (v3: new collision data, improved atom number calibration, revised text, improved figures.)