Interactions in the Ultracold Lithium Ytterbium 3P2 System

Abstract

I detail the execution and results of experiments in a mixture of ultracold atomic gases using fermionic lithium (6Li) and bosonic ytterbium (174Yb) in the metastable 3P2 state. We demonstrate efficient transfer of ground state Yb atoms to this metastable state in the presence of Li. A method to spin-purify the resulting metastable Yb atoms via a magnetic gradient is presented. We investigate intra-species and inter-species inelastic collisions over a wide range of magnetic fields. The resulting inelastic spectrum is linked to a potential collisional resonance between the m_J=-1 metastable state of Yb and ground state Li near 450G. This work begins the path towards creation of trapped ultracold and magnetic ground state molecules. Such molecules allow experiments which cannot be accessed by current generations of bi-alkali molecule experiments.