Spin gradient demagnetization cooling of ultracold atoms

We demonstrate a new cooling method in which a time-varying magnetic field gradient is applied to an ultracold spin mixture. This enables preparation of isolated spin distributions at positive and negative effective spin temperatures of ±50 pK. The spin system can also be used to cool other degrees of freedom, and we have used this coupling to cool an apparently equilibrated Mott insulator of rubidium atoms to 350?pK. These are the lowest temperatures ever measured in any system. The entropy of the spin mixture is in the regime where magnetic ordering is expected.