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Joint Conference of the European Frequency and Time Forum and IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium (EFTF/IFCS)

Toward a mercury optical lattice clock: Spectroscopy of the clock transition in fermionic isotopes

Sinda Mejri, M. Petersen, Daniel Varela Magalhães, C. Mandache, Samuel T. Dawkins, Radu Chicireanu, Yann Le Coq, Andr  Clairon, S. Bize

Published Apr 1, 2009• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this paper, we report on development on an optical lattice clock using neutral mercury. Laser spectroscopy of the clock transition in fermionic isotope has been performed, which is an important step in this project.
DOI
10.1109/freq.2009.5168305

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In this poster, we will describe the key developments made in our setup to switch from a clock using fermionic isotopes of mercury to bosonic isotopes of mercury. Initially, we must establish the magnetic field necessary for the quenching method, i.e. to induce the bosonic clock transition. We have introduced a technique to create a strong magnetic field during the probing time. Furthermore, we have enhanced our control over the magnetic environment. Secondly, as we aim to observe the clock transition, we have had to enhance the capabilities of our ultrastable light generation. This enhancement was crucial to provide a tuning range sufficient to reach the frequency of any of the five stable bosonic isotopes while maintaining spectral quality. Thirdly, we calculated the theoretical Rabi pulsation for a clock utilizing bosonic isotopes, determining that we must increase the the probe laser power to achieve a sufficiently large Rabi pulsation. This adjustment is necessary to facilitate the initial exploration of the transition.
We report direct laser spectroscopy of the $^{1}S_{0}\mathrm{\text{\ensuremath{-}}}^{3}P_{0}$ transition at 265.6 nm in fermionic isotopes of neutral mercury in a magneto-optical trap. Measurements of the frequency against the LNE-SYRTE primary reference using an optical frequency comb yield $1\text{ }128\text{ }575\text{ }290\text{ }808.4\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}5.6\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{kHz}$ in 199Hg^{199}\mathrm{Hg}199Hg and $1\text{ }128\text{ }569\text{ }561\text{ }139.6\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}5.3\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{kHz}$ in 201Hg^{201}\mathrm{Hg}201Hg. The uncertainty, allowed by the observation of the Doppler-free recoil doublet, is 4 orders of magnitude lower than previous indirect determinations. Mercury is a promising candidate for future optical lattice clocks due to its low sensitivity to blackbody radiation.
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.
We describe our work to develop an optical lattice clock using neutral mercury, which has the potential to reach accuracy near 1 part in 1018owing to its low sensitivity to black body radiation. We describe developments of our experimental setup to allow dipole lattice trapping and spectroscopy in the Lamb-Dicke regime. Specifically, we report on the implementation of a low noise imaging and detection system, on the characterization of the magneto-optic trap from which the dipole trap will be loaded, on the implementation of the dipole lattice trap itself, a challenging task given the wavelength and power requirements.