Cross-section for collisions of ultracold $ \mathsf {^7}$ Li with Na

Fiftyfold Improvement in the Number of Quantum Degenerate Fermionic Atoms

“…We loaded ∼ 3 × 10 9 sodium and up to 10 8 lithium atoms in their upper hyperfine states from a two-species magneto-optical trap (MOT) into the magnetic trap. The adverse effect of light assisted collisions in a twospecies MOT [6,22] was minimized by slightly displacing the two MOTs with respect to each other. During the typical 30 s of evaporative/sympathetic cooling, we observed no significant inelastic loss of lithium atoms (by three-body collisions or dipolar relaxation), the final number of degenerate atoms being at least half of the number initially loaded into the trap.…”

Trap loss collisions of6Li and7Li with23Na in a combined magneto-optical trap

“…Each data point was obtained from the comparison of five Li decay curves with and without Na being loaded to the MOT. The observation time for Trap loss collisions of 6 Li and 7 Li with 23 each trap decay curve was typically 3 min for 7 LiNa and 2 min for 6 LiNa collisions. The change of signal covered more than one order of magnitude in all individual measurements (for the measurements on 7 LiNa collisions it typically covered more than two orders of magnitude).…”

“…The optical setup of our two species MOT is described in detail in [22] and [23]. It is a standard arrangement, formed by three retro-reflected, circularly polarized laser beams.…”

“…the review by Mancini et al [4]). In this paper we report on measurements of trap loss collisions of 23 Na with 6 Li and 7 Li.…”