Exotic many-body physics with large-spin Fermi gases

We report the realization of a novel degenerate Fermi mixture with an SUð2Þ Â SUð6Þ symmetry in a cold atomic gas.We successfully cool the mixture of the two fermionic isotopes of ytterbium 171 Yb with the nuclear spin I ¼ 1=2 and 173 Yb with I ¼ 5=2 below the Fermi temperature T F as 0:46T F for 171 Yb and 0:54T F for 173 Yb.The same scattering lengths for different spin components make this mixture featured with the novel SUð2Þ Â SUð6Þ symmetry.The nuclear spin components are separately imaged by exploiting an optical Stern-Gerlach effect.In addition, the mixture is loaded into a 3D optical lattice to implement the SUð2Þ Â SUð6Þ Hubbard model.This mixture will open the door to the study of novel quantum phases such as a spinor Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer-like fermionic superfluid.