Production of a highly degenerate Fermi gas of metastable He 3 atoms

Abstract

We report on the achievement of quantum degeneracy in both components of a Bose-Fermi mixture of metastable helium atoms, He∗4 and He∗3. Degeneracy is achieved via Doppler cooling and forced evaporation for He∗4, and sympathetically cooling He∗3 with He∗4. We discuss our modified implementation, along with the high versatility of our system. This technique is able to produce a degenerate Fermi gas with a minimum reduced temperature of T/TF=0.14(1), consisting of 2.5�104 He∗3 atoms. Due to the high internal energy of both isotopes single atom detection is possible, opening the possibility of a large number of experiments into Bose-Fermi mixtures.