We’re now offically a dual-species experiment. It’s not as big and bright as our lithium-7 MOT, but we’ve managed to magneto-optically trap lithium-6, even though the lithium vapor source currently installed in the 2DMOT only contains about 7% lithium-6 (that’s the natural isotope abundance). After we install an enriched Li-6 vapor source and make some other improvements (grey molasses cooling beams) we’ll be ready to load both isotopes into an optical dipole trap. Quantum degeneracy here we come!

Our intense efforts during the winter “break” were rewarded this afternoon with the birth of a bright little ball of ultracold lithium-7 at the center of the 3DMOT chamber. It looked pretty robust even without setting up the push beam for the 2DMOT! The lithium-6 MOT should be running very soon as well. 2016 is going to be a very interesting year in the lab.

Yanping and Prof. Wright traveled to the APS DAMOP meeting in Columbus OH this month and reported on progress with the experiment. Here’s a copy of the poster, in slightly reduced resolution to accommodate wordpress file size limits.

Sarah Khatry successfully constructed a prototype of the high-finesse bowtie resonator we’re planning to install in the main chamber, and she presented her results with a poster at the Wetterhahn symposium in May.