Measurement of three-body recombination coefficient of ultracold lithium and strontium atoms

We report on the observation of a conspicuous loss in an ultracold mixture of ⁷Li and ⁸⁸Sr atoms confined in a far-off-resonance optical dipole trap. We attribute the trap loss to the three-body inelastic Li-Sr-Sr collision and extract the corresponding three-body recombination coefficient K₃ at T~ 18.5,45,70,600 μ K. The measured three-body recombination coefficient is about two to three orders of magnitude larger than the typical values convenient for realizing quantum degenerate gases. It also indicates a potentially large s-wave scattering length between the bosonic ⁷Li and ⁸⁸Sr atoms, and essentially rules out the prospect of realizing ⁷Li and ⁸⁸Sr mixtures of high phase space density.