Abstract
We report on a simple oven-loaded magneto-optical trap (MOT) apparatus for the creation of both molecular Bose-Einstein condensates (mBEC) and degenerate Fermi gases (DFGs) of lithium. The apparatus does not require a Zeeman slower or a 2D MOT nor does it require any separation or differential pumping between the effusive atom source and the science chamber. The result is an exceedingly simple, inexpensive, and compact vacuum system ideal for miniaturization. We discuss our work in the context of other realizations of quantum degenerate gases by evaporation in optical dipole traps and illustrate that our apparatus meets the key requirements of atom number and trap lifetime. We also demonstrate with this system the production of a mBEC, and we use it to observe the pairing gap of a strongly interacting two-component DFG in the BEC-BCS crossover regime.
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