Cooling dynamics of an alkali-lanthanide mixture

ORAL

Abstract

We report co-trapping and sympathetic cooling of an erbium-lithium mixture. We first load atoms into magneto-optical traps, followed by sub-Doppler cooling in the case of lithium, then sequentially load each species into a large-volume optical dipole trap. Due to its lower polarizability, the erbium gas serves as a coolant for lithium, while the large mass ratio necessitates a high elastic scattering rate. Numerous Feshbach resonances provide control of interspecies thermalization.

*This work is supported by the National Science Foundation (Center for Ultracold Atoms PHY-2317134 and grant no. PHY-2207367), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program (FA9550-22-1-0066), and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. JK and JR are supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (grant no. 1745302).

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Presenters

  • Jared Rivera

    • MIT, Department of Physics
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Authors

  • Jared Rivera

    • MIT, Department of Physics
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Jasmine Kalia

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Richard J Fletcher

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology