Abstract The efficiency of the optical trapping of ultracold atoms depends on the atomic dynamic dipole polarizability governing the atom-field interaction. In this article, we have calculated the real and imaginary parts of the dynamic dipole polarizability of dysprosium in the ground and first excited levels. Due to the high electronic angular momentum of those two states, the polarizabilities possess scalar, vector and tensor contributions that we have computed, on a wide range of trapping wavelengths, using the sum-over-state formula. Using the same formalism, we have also calculated the C 6 coefficients characterizing the van der Waals interaction between two dysprosium atoms in the two lowest levels. We have computed the energies of excited states and the transition probabilities appearing in the sums, using a combination of ab initio and least-square-fitting techniques provided by the Cowan codes and extended in our group. Regarding the real part of the polarizability, for field frequencies far from atomic resonances, the vector and tensor contributions are two-orders-of-magnitude smaller than the scalar contribution, whereas for the imaginary part, the vector and tensor contributions represent a noticeable fraction of the scalar contribution. Finally, our anisotropic C 6 coefficients are much smaller than those published in the literature.
Ultracold atoms confined in a dipole trap are submitted to a potential whose depth is proportional to the real part of their dynamic dipole polarizability. The atoms also experience photon scattering whose rate is proportional to the imaginary part of their dynamic dipole polarizability. In this article we calculate the complex dynamic dipole polarizability of ground-state erbium, a rare-earth atom that was recently Bose condensed. The polarizability is calculated with the sum-over-state formula inherent to second-order perturbation theory. The summation is performed on transition energies and transition dipole moments from ground-state erbium, which are computed using the Racah-Slater least-squares fitting procedure provided by the cowan codes. This allows us to predict nine unobserved odd-parity energy levels of total angular momentum
J=5, 6, and 7, in the range 25 000--31 000 cm${}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ above the ground state. Regarding the trapping potential, we find that ground-state erbium essentially behaves like a spherically symmetric atom, in spite of its large electronic angular momentum. We also find a mostly isotropic van der Waals interaction between two ground-state erbium atoms, characterized by a coefficient
C6iso=1760 a.u. To the contrary, the photon-scattering rate shows a pronounced anisotropy since it strongly depends on the polarization of the trapping light.
The efficiency of optical trapping is determined by the atomic dynamic dipole polarizability, whose real and imaginary parts are associated with the potential energy and photon-scattering rate, respectively. In this article we develop a formalism to calculate analytically the real and imaginary parts of the scalar, vector, and tensor polarizabilities of lanthanide atoms. We assume that the sum-over-state formula comprises only transitions involving electrons in the valence orbitals like
6s,5d,6p, and
7s, while transitions involving
4f core electrons are neglected. Applying this formalism to the ground level of configuration
4fq6s2, we restrict the sum to transitions implying the
4fq6s6p configuration, which yields polarizabilities depending on two parameters: an effective transition energy and an effective transition dipole moment. Then, by introducing configuration-interaction mixing between
4fq6s6p and other configurations, we demonstrate that the imaginary part of the scalar, vector, and tensor polarizabilities is very sensitive to configuration-interaction coefficients, whereas the real part is not. The magnitude and anisotropy of the photon-scattering rate are thus strongly related to the details of the atomic electronic structure. Those analytical results agree with our detailed electronic-structure calculations of the energy levels, Land\'e
g factors, transition probabilities, polarizabilities, and van der Waals
C6 coefficients, previously performed on erbium and dysprosium and presently performed on holmium. Our results show that, although the density of states decreases with increasing
q, the configuration interaction between $4{f}^{q}6s6p,\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}4{f}^{q\ensuremath{-}1}5d6{s}^{2}$, and $4{f}^{q\ensuremath{-}1}5{d}^{2}6s$ is surprisingly stronger in erbium (
q=12) than in holmium (
q=11), itself stronger than in dysprosium (
q=10).
The long-range part of the interatomic interactions plays a substantial role in the collisional dynamics of ultracold gases. Here, we report on the calculation of the isotropic and anisotropic
C6 coefficients characterizing the van der Waals interaction between dysprosium or erbium atoms in the two lowest energy levels and the ground-state alkali-metal (Li, Na, K, Rb, Cs, Fr) or alkaline-earth-metal (Be, Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba) atoms. The calculations are done using the integral of dynamic dipole polarizabilities at so-called imaginary frequencies of the two interacting atoms. For all atom pairs, we find that the isotropic
C6 coefficients are two or three orders of magnitude larger than the anisotropic ones. Those coefficients are essential for modeling collisional properties of heteronuclear quantum mixtures containing highly magnetic dysprosium or erbium atoms and alkali-metal or alkaline-earth-metal atoms.
The dynamic scalar and tensor polarizabilities of the rare-earth-metal atoms are calculated with time-dependent density functional theory. The frequency-dependent polarizabilities at imaginary frequencies are used to determine the isotropic and orientation-dependent van der Waals coefficients for the interactions of the rare-earth-metal atoms with helium atoms. The static polarizabilities are compared with other theoretical values and with experimental results. The agreement is satisfactory in most cases but there are some exceptions where the discrepancy between theory and experiment is significant. The derived isotropic van der Waals coefficients range between 37 and 50
EHa06 and the orientation-dependent coefficients between 2 and $\ensuremath{-}1$
EHa06. Thus the ratio of elastic to inelastic scattering cross sections is expected to be substantial and any one of the rare-earth-metal atoms is an excellent candidate for trapping and cooling in a He gas.
We report on the determination of the dynamical polarizability of ultracold erbium atoms in the ground and in one excited state at three different wavelengths, which are particularly relevant for optical trapping. Our study combines experimental measurements of the light shift and theoretical calculations. In particular, our experimental approach allows us to isolate the different contributions to the polarizability, namely, the isotropic scalar and anisotropic tensor part. For the latter contribution, we observe a clear dependence of the atomic polarizability on the angle between the laser-field-polarization axis and the quantization axis, set by the external magnetic field. Such an angle dependence is particularly pronounced in the excited-state polarizability. We compare our experimental findings with the theoretical values, based on semiempirical electronic structure calculations, and we observe a very good overall agreement. Our results pave the way to exploit the anisotropy of the tensor polarizability for spin-selective preparation and manipulation.
Open-shell lanthanide atoms, and dysprosium in particular, combine a large ground-state angular momentum with dense electronic spectra, making their dynamical polarizability strongly dependent on wavelength and internal state, and therefore challenging to calculate and characterize experimentally. This issue has become especially relevant with the recent development of single-atom trapping of dysprosium in optical-tweezer arrays, where precise knowledge of the polarizability is needed to design optimized trapping architectures. Here, we exploit the strong spin-dependent light shift near the
J′=J−1 intercombination line at 530.306 nm to determine the background scalar and vector polarizabilities of
162Dy in its ground state near this wavelength. Our measurements quantitatively agree with atomic-structure calculations and provide new insight into the contributions of nearby transitions in a spectral region relevant to emerging dysprosium tweezer platforms.