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Abstract

This thesis reports on the realization of a micrometer-sized optical dipole trap for the preparation of a highly degenerate Fermi gas of 6Li atoms. The degenerate ensemble in the microtrap is the starting point for future experiments with a finite number of fermions. One phenomenon to study will be the formation of a shell structure in an interacting two-component spin-mixture. 6Li is especially well suited for such experiments due to the easy tuneability of the inter-particle interaction by means of Feshbach resonances. In the course of this thesis, we present our apparatus for the creation of ultracold Fermi gases. Thereby, the main subject is the assembly of our microtrap. After analyzing the assembly in an external test setup, we focus on the scheme for the transfer of atoms from our large volume optical dipole trap into the microtrap. Using a non-interacting Fermi gas we were able to determine the characteristics of the microtrap, such as lifetime and trap frequencies. Subsequently, we can give an estimation for the degeneracy of the Fermi gas inside. As an outlook, we present our first promising attempts to control the particle number, which is the next milestone on the way towards experiments on finite systems of fermions.