Simultaneous magneto-optical trapping of a boson-fermion mixture of metastable helium atoms

We simultaneously confine fermionic metastable He3 atoms and bosonic metastable He4 atoms in a magneto-optical trap. The trapped clouds, containing up to 1.5x108 atoms of each isotope, are characterized by measuring ions and metastable helium atoms escaping from the trap. Optical pumping of He3 atoms to a nontrapped hyperfine state is investigated and it is shown that large atom numbers can be confined without additional repumping lasers. Unique possibilities for quantum degeneracy experiments with mixtures of spin-polarized metastable He3 and He4 atoms are indicated