title: Collisional stability of a three-component degenerate fermi gas.
abstract: We report on the creation of a degenerate Fermi gas consisting of a balanced mixture of atoms in three different hyperfine states of 6Li. This new system consists of three distinguishable fermions with different and tunable interparticle scattering lengths a_{12}, a_{13}, and a_{23}. We are able to prepare samples containing 5x10;{4} atoms in each state at a temperature of about 215 nK, which corresponds to T/T_{F} approximately 0.37. We investigated the collisional stability of the gas for magnetic fields between 0 and 600 G and found a prominent loss feature at 130 G. From lifetime measurements, we determined three-body loss coefficients, which vary over nearly 3 orders of magnitude.
authors.affiliation: Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Saupfercheckweg 1, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany. timo.ottenstein@mpi-hd.mpg.de
authors.forename: T B
authors.initials: TB
authors.lastname: Ottenstein
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Lompe
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kohnen
authors.forename: A N
authors.initials: AN
authors.lastname: Wenz
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jochim