Düsseldorf 2007 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 27: Ultracold collisions (jointly with Q)

A 27.2: Vortrag

Freitag, 23. März 2007, 11:00–11:15, 6G

Ellastic collisions in a mixture of Yb and Rb atoms — Sven Kroboth, •Nils Nemitz, Florian Baumer, Claudia Höhl, and Axel Görlitz — Institut für Experimentalphysik, Universität Düsseldorf

The collisional properties of atoms play an important role in determining the features and realizability of quantum gases.

We report on an experimental study of inter-species collisions in a mixture of cold ytterbium and rubidium atoms. The Yb atoms are held in a bichromatic optical dipole trap designed to have minimal effect on the evaporatively cooled ⁸⁷Rb atoms which are held in a Ioffe-Pritchard type magnetic trap.

Collisions are observed through sympathetic cooling of Yb by Rb. In our experiment, the Yb temperature decreases from initially 50µK to near the Rb temperature of 20µK on a time scale of a second for the isotopes ¹⁷⁴Yb and ¹⁷⁶Yb. In contrast, a much smaller thermalization rate found for ¹⁷²Yb indicates a significantly smaller cross-section for collisions with Rb.

Our results are an important step towards the creation of a mixed quantum gas and heteronuclear Yb-Rb molecules.