title: All-optical production of a degenerate Fermi gas.
abstract: We achieve degeneracy in a mixture of the two lowest hyperfine states of 6Li by direct evaporation in a CO2 laser trap, yielding the first all optically produced degenerate Fermi gas. More than 10(5) atoms are confined at temperatures below 4 microK at full trap depth, where the Fermi temperature for each state is 8 microK. This degenerate two-component mixture is ideal for exploring mechanisms of superconductivity ranging from Cooper pairing to Bose-Einstein condensation of strongly bound pairs.
authors.affiliation: Physics Department, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708-0305, USA.
authors.forename: S R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Granade
authors.forename: M E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Gehm
authors.forename: K M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: O'Hara
authors.forename: J E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Thomas