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arXiv:2604.03177 · Physical Review A

Determination of the ground-state polarizability of Dy 162 near 530 nm

Alexandre Journeaux, Maxime Lecomte, Julie Veschambre, Maxence Lepers, Jean Dalibard, Raphael Lopes

Published Jul 15, 2026• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

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 $^{162}$Dy 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.

DOI
10.1103/4xl7-c46p

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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−1J'=J-1J′=J−1 intercombination line at 530.306 nm to determine the background scalar and vector polarizabilities of 162^{162}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.
We report the preparation and observation of single atoms of dysprosium in arrays of optical tweezers with a wavelength of 532 nm, imaged on the intercombination line at 626 nm. We use the anisotropic light shift specific to lanthanides and in particular a large difference in tensor and vector polarizabilities between the ground and excited states to tune the differential light shift and produce tweezers in near-magic or magic polarization. This allows us to find a regime where single atoms can be trapped and imaged. Using the tweezer array toolbox to manipulate lanthanides will open new research directions for quantum physics studies by taking advantage of their rich spectrum, large spin, and magnetic dipole moment.
We report experimental measurements of the dynamical polarizability of dysprosium, at a wavelength of 532 nm. We measure all three components (scalar, vector, and tensor) of the anisotropic polarizability for the ground and the excited manifolds of the intercombination transition of Dy at 626 nm. The apparatus on which the measurements are performed is presented. We obtain with this setup imaging of single Dy atoms with fidelity above 99% and losses below 2.5% induced by imaging. We then describe the methods used to extract the polarizability. In particular, we combine a measurement of trap frequency and trap depth on single atoms in optical tweezers, allowing us to obtain a measurement of the ground-state polarizability free of errors in trap waist calibration. The obtained values give a magic condition between two Zeeman states in the ground and excited manifolds, which is used to image single atoms in optical tweezer arrays. The scalar polarizability of the ground state is in disagreement with theoretical expectations, calling for future investigations to resolve the discrepancy.
We report a measurement of the dynamical polarizability of dysprosium atoms in their electronic ground state at the optical wavelength of 1064 nm, which is of particular interest for laser trapping experiments. Our method is based on collective oscillations in an optical dipole trap, and reaches unprecedented accuracy and precision by comparison with an alkali atom (potassium) as a reference species. We obtain values of 184.4(2.4) and 1.7(6) a.u. for the scalar and tensor polarizability, respectively. Our experiments have reached a level that permits meaningful tests of current theoretical descriptions and provides valuable information for future experiments utilizing the intriguing properties of heavy lanthanide atoms.
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.
We theoretically study dynamic scalar polarizabilities of the ground and select long-lived excited states of dysprosium, a highly magnetic atom recently laser cooled and trapped. We demonstrate that there is a set of magic wavelengths of the unpolarized lattice laser field for each pair of states, which includes the ground state and one of these excited states. At these wavelengths, the energy shift due to laser field is the same for both states, which can be useful for resolved sideband cooling on narrow transitions and precision spectroscopy. We present an analytical formula that, near resonances, allows for the determination of approximate values of the magic wavelengths without calculating the dynamic polarizabilities of the excited states.
We perform narrowline cooling of single dysprosium atoms trapped in a 1D optical tweezers array, employing the narrow single-photon transition at 741 nm. At the trapping wavelength of 532 nm, the excited state is less trapped than the ground state. To obtain efficient cooling performances, we chirp the frequency of the cooling beam to subsequently address the red sidebands of different motional states. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the cooling protocol through Raman thermometry, which we characterize for our experimental conditions. We obtain an array of 75 atoms close to the motional ground state in the radial direction of the tweezers. Our results demonstrate the possibility to manipulate the motional degree of freedom of dysprosium in optical tweezers arrays, a key ingredient to exploit the potential of lanthanide-based tweezers platforms for quantum science.