Production of a degenerate Fermi gas of metastable helium-3 atoms

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We give an overview of the experiments at the Laser Centre of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam on ultracold gases of metastable helium-4 and helium-3 as well as mixtures of both isotopes. We describe our experimental setup and discuss our experiments on Bose-Einstein condensation of 4He* (more than 10 million atoms in a BEC) and sympathetic cooling of 3He* towards Fermi degeneracy (more than 1 million atoms below the Fermi temperature as well as realization of a degenerate boson-fermion mixture). We also present our results on Penning Ionization in ~1 mK clouds containing a single isotope (homonuclear losses) or a mixture of both isotopes (heteronuclear losses).
18 pages, 11 figures; to be published in the Proceedings of the International school of physics "Enrico Ferm": Ultracold Fermi gases, Varenna, June 20-30 (2006)

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