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arXiv:0711.4638 · Physical Review Letters

Trapping of Neutral Mercury Atoms and Prospects for Optical Lattice Clocks

Hidekazu Hachisu, K. Miyagishi, S. G. Porsev, Andrei Derevianko, Vitalii D Ovsiannikov, Vitalii G Pal'chikov, Masao Takamoto, Hidetoshi Katori

Published Feb 8, 2008• 182 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We report vapor-cell magneto-optical trapping of Hg isotopes on the (1)S(0)-(3)P(1) intercombination transition. Six abundant isotopes, including four bosons and two fermions, were trapped. Hg is the heaviest nonradioactive atom trapped so far, which enables sensitive atomic searches for "new physics" beyond the standard model. We propose an accurate optical lattice clock based on Hg and evaluate its systematic accuracy to be better than 10;{-18}. Highly accurate and stable Hg-based clocks will provide a new avenue for the research of optical lattice clocks and the time variation of the fine-structure constant.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.100.053001

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We report vapor-cell magneto-optical trapping of Hg isotopes on the (1)S(0)-(3)P(1) intercombination transition. Six abundant isotopes, including four bosons and two fermions, were trapped. Hg is the heaviest nonradioactive atom trapped so far, which enables sensitive atomic searches for "new physics" beyond the standard model. We propose an accurate optical lattice clock based on Hg and evaluate its systematic accuracy to be better than 10;{-18}. Highly accurate and stable Hg-based clocks will provide a new avenue for the research of optical lattice clocks and the time variation of the fine-structure constant.
We are investigating the possibilities of using neutral mercury as a new species to realize a highly accurate atomic clock using the non-perturbing dipole lattice trapping scheme. Typically, accuracy below 10-17 is targeted, which would make neutral mercury an interesting candidate for a redefinition of the SI second. This paper presents our on-going work towards the realization of an optical lattice clock using neutral mercury. We will describe a 254 nm laser source delivering several hundreds of milliWatts at this wavelength with a suitably low frequency noise for laser cooling and magneto-optic trapping. We will describe our vacuum system for magneto-optic trap and report on the status of our work regarding magneto-optic trapping of mercury. We will also describe our clock laser at 266 nm.
Due to its low sensitivity to blackbody radiation, neutral mercury is a good candidate for the most accurate optical lattice clock. Here we report the observation of cold mercury atoms in a magneto-optical trap (MOT). Because of the high vapor pressure at room temperature, the mercury source and the cold pump were cooled down to −40 °C and −70 °C, respectively, to keep the science chamber in an ultra-high vacuum of 6 × 10 −9 Pa. Limited by the power of the UV cooling laser, the one beam folded MOT configuration was adopted, and 1.5 × 10 5 Hg-202 atoms were observed by fluorescence detection.
We present a realization of a magneto-optical trap of mercury atoms on the $^{1}S_{0}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}^{3}P_{1}$ intercombination line. We report on trapping of all stable mercury isotopes. We characterize the effect of laser detuning, laser intensity, and gradient field on the trapping performance of our system. The atom number for the most abundant isotope 202Hg^{202}\mathrm{Hg}202Hg is $5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{7}$ atoms. Moreover, we study the difference in cooling processes for bosonic and fermionic isotopes. We observe agreement with the Doppler cooling theory for the bosonic species and show sub-Doppler cooling for the fermionic species. We reach a phase-space density of a few parts in ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}7}$, which constitutes a promising starting condition for dipole trap loading and evaporative cooling.
We are investigating the possibilities of using neutral mercury as a new species to realize a highly accurate atomic clock using the non-perturbing dipole lattice trapping scheme. Typically, accuracy below 10-17is targeted. This proceeding outlines some properties of neutral mercury which are relevant to an optical lattice clock. We also present our on-going work towards the realization of the mercury optical lattice clock. Design considerations are made about the main subsystems. Recent work on these subsystems is described.
The optical lattice clock develops fast in recent years, and its stability and accuracy has already surpassed the microwave fountain clock and the optical clock based on ion trap. The mercury (Hg) lattice clock has the possibility to make a breakthrough in the limitation of blackbody radiation shift for strontium (Sr) and ytterbium (Yb) lattice clock, and reach the uncertainty in E-18 level at room temperature. For the purposes of laser cooling of mercury atoms and interrogating of the clock transition from1S0state to3P0state, a high-power cooling laser at 253.7 nm and an ultra-stable Hz-level linewidth laser at 265.6 nm are required, respectively. Here, we report our development of these laser sources for a neutral Hg lattice clock.