Quantum Degenerate Mixtures of Rubidium and Ytterbium

We have recently created the first degenerate mixture of rubidium and ytterbium atoms. By using a highly tunable, species selective trap, we have sympathetically cooled fermionic 171Yb atoms to degeneracy using 87Rb (See above figure). In the near future, the fermions will be trapped on a rubidium-blind lattice with the 87Rb BEC acting as a phonon bath. This system will allow us to investigate new cooling methods for achieving extremely low entropies with lattice atoms, and to explore the physics of impurities immersed in a BEC. Our paper can be found in Physical Review A.

http://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.92.043604