Degenerate Fermi gases of ytterbium.

Evaporative cooling was performed to cool fermionic 173Yb atoms in a crossed optical dipole trap. The large elastic collision rate leads to efficient evaporation and we have successfully cooled the atoms to 0.37+/-0.06 of the Fermi temperature, that is to say, to a quantum degenerate regime. In this regime, a plunge of evaporation efficiency was observed as a result of Fermi degeneracy.