Production of Degenerate Fermi Gases of 6Li Atoms in an Optical Dipole Trap

We report the experimental production of degenerate Fermi gases of Li-6 atoms in an optical dipole trap. The gray-molasses technique is carried out to decrease the atomic temperature to 57 mu K, which facilitates the efficient loading of cold atoms into the optical dipole trap. The Fermi degeneracy is achieved by evaporative cooling of a two-spin mixture of Li-6 atoms on the Feshbach resonance. The degenerate atom number per spin is 3.5 x 10(4), and the reduced temperature T/T (F) is as low as 0.1, where T (F) is the Fermi temperature of the non-interacting Fermi gas. We also observe the anisotropic expansion of the atom cloud in the strongly interacting regime.

Automated summary

The experimental production of degenerate Fermi gases of Li-6 atoms in an optical dipole trap was successfully achieved, where atomic temperature was decreased using gray-molasses technique and evaporative cooling. The anisotropic expansion of the degenerate atom cloud in the strongly interacting regime was also observed during the study.