Sympathetic Cooling with Two Atomic Species in an Optical Trap
Abstract
We simultaneously trap ultracold lithium and cesium atoms in an optical dipole trap formed by the focus of a CO2 laser and study the exchange of thermal energy between the gases. The cesium gas, which is optically cooled to 20 μK, efficiently decreases the temperature of the lithium gas through sympathetic cooling. The measured cross section for thermalizing 133Cs-7Li collisions is 8 × 10-12 cm2, for both species in their lowest hyperfine ground state. Besides thermalization, we observe evaporation of lithium purely through elastic cesium-lithium collisions (sympathetic evaporation).
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