Trapping an isotopic mixture of fermionic 84Rb and bosonic 87Rb atoms -: art. no. 011402

We have simultaneously confined fermionic Rb-84 and bosonic Rb-87 atoms in overlapping magneto-optical traps in which radioactive Rb-84 atoms (t(1/2) = 33 d) have been trapped. We investigated Rb-84 trap loss when overlapped with a cloud of Rb-87 atoms trapped from a background rubidium vapor. Collision loss measurements were taken with similar to 5 x 10(5) and similar to 4 x 10(7) atoms of trapped Rb-84 and Rb-87, respectively. We have found a trapping solution for which there is negligible additional trap loss for Rb-84 due to the presence of Rb-87, showing that the mixture can be readily prepared for a sympathetic cooling experiment.