On the prospects of building optical atomic clocks using Er I or Er III

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of using neutral and doubly ionized erbium atoms to develop highly precise optical atomic clocks, highlighting their low sensitivity to environmental perturbations and promising accuracy levels.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of erbium-based optical clocks using narrow quadrupole transitions, proposing their feasibility for achieving extremely high precision.

Findings

Transition decay width to energy ratio less than 10^-20

Low sensitivity to black body radiation perturbations

Potential accuracy level of 10^-18 or better

Abstract

The possibility of using neutral and double ionized erbium for atomic clocks of high precision is investigated. In both cases the narrow electric quadrupole clock transition between the ground and first exited state of the same configuration lies in optical region. The estimated ratio of decay width to transition energy is less then 10 20. We demonstrate that this transitions are not sensitive to black body radiation and if other perturbations are also considered the relative accuracy of the clocks can probably reach the level of 10 (pow minus 18) or better.