Abstract
We achieve degeneracy in a mixture of the two lowest hyperfine states of by direct evaporation in a laser trap, yielding the first all optically produced degenerate Fermi gas. More than atoms are confined at temperatures below at full trap depth, where the Fermi temperature for each state is . This degenerate two-component mixture is ideal for exploring mechanisms of superconductivity ranging from Cooper pairing to Bose-Einstein condensation of strongly bound pairs.
- Received 19 November 2001
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.120405
©2002 American Physical Society