Fiftyfold improvement in the number of quantum degenerate fermionic atoms

We have produced a quantum degenerate Li-6 Fermi gas with up to 7x10(7) atoms, an improvement by a factor of 50 over all previous experiments with degenerate Fermi gases. This was achieved by sympathetic cooling with bosonic Na-23 in the F=2, upper hyperfine ground state. We have also achieved Bose-Einstein condensation of F=2 sodium atoms by direct evaporation.