Progress Towards Cooper Pairing in ^6Li

The success of attaining Bose-Einstein condensation in ultracold alkali gases has encouraged research in quantum degenerate Fermi gases (DFG). One of the most exciting opportunities for a DFG is the prospect for Cooper pairing in a two component gas. A large negative s-wave scattering length is required for the phase transition to occur at attainable temperatures. ^6Li is an excellant candidate for this experiment since its triplet scattering length of -2250 Bohr is the largest known scattering length of any atom. Towards this end, we have developed an electromagnetic trap, for confining both ^7Li and ^6Li. The boson, ^7Li, will be evaporatively cooled while the ^6Li is cooled by sympathetic collisions with ^7Li. Once cooled to the critical temperature, a microwave pulse will create an incoherent two spin mixture of the fermions to allow for Cooper pairing. We are currently able to individually load ~ 2 × 10^9 ^7Li atoms and ~ 2 × 10^8 ^6Li into an Ioffe-Pritchard trap at an initial temperature of 700 μ K, and we have begun evaporative cooling. Our current progress will be discussed as well as ideas for observing the pairing transition.