title: Production of long-lived ultracold Li2 molecules from a Fermi gas.
abstract: We create weakly bound Li2 molecules from a degenerate two component Fermi gas by sweeping a magnetic field across a Feshbach resonance. The atom-molecule transfer efficiency can reach 85% and is studied as a function of magnetic field and initial temperature. The bosonic molecules remain trapped for 0.5 s and their temperature is within a factor of 2 from the Bose-Einstein condensation temperature. A thermodynamical model reproduces qualitatively the experimental findings.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 24 rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris 05, France.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cubizolles
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Bourdel
authors.forename: S J J M F
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Kokkelmans
authors.forename: G V
authors.initials: GV
authors.lastname: Shlyapnikov
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Salomon