Chromium Dipolar Fermi Sea

We report on the production of a degenerate Fermi gas of Cr-53 atoms, polarized in the state F = 9/2, m(F) = -9/2, by sympathetic cooling with bosonic S = 3, m(S) = -3 Cr-52 atoms. We load in an optical dipole trap 3 x 10(453)Cr atoms with 10(6) Cr-52 atoms. Despite the initial small number of fermionic atoms, we reach a final temperature of T similar or equal to 0.6 x T-f (Fermi temperature), with up to 10(3) Cr-53 atoms. This surprisingly efficient evaporation stems from an interisotope scattering length vertical bar a(BF)vertical bar = 80(+/- 10)a(B) (Bohr radius) which is small enough to reduce evaporative losses of the fermionic isotope, but large enough to assure thermalization.