Sub-Doppler laser cooling of fermionic ⁴⁰ K atoms in three-dimensional gray optical molasses

Abstract

We demonstrate sub-Doppler cooling of 40K on the D_1 atomic transition. Using a gray molasses scheme, we efficiently cool a compressed cloud of 6.5x10^8 atoms from ~ 4\mK to 20uK in 8 ms. After transfer in a quadrupole magnetic trap, we measure a phase space density of ~10^-5. This technique offers a promising route for fast evaporation of fermionic 40K.