  We propose a fault tolerant loading scheme to produce an array of fermions in
an optical lattice of the high fidelity required for applications in quantum
information processing and the modelling of strongly correlated systems. A cold
reservoir of Fermions plays a dual role as a source of atoms to be loaded into
the lattice via a Raman process and as a heat bath for sympathetic cooling of
lattice atoms. Atoms are initially transferred into an excited motional state
in each lattice site, and then decay to the motional ground state, creating
particle-hole pairs in the reservoir. Atoms transferred into the ground
motional level are no longer coupled back to the reservoir, and doubly occupied
sites in the motional ground state are prevented by Pauli blocking. This scheme
has strong conceptual connections with optical pumping, and can be extended to
load high-fidelity patterns of atoms.
