Blackbody radiation shift assessment for a lutetium ion clock

TL;DR

This study measures the blackbody radiation shift in a lutetium ion clock, providing critical data for improving clock accuracy by evaluating the shifts at 300 K for two key transitions.

Contribution

The paper presents the first measurement of dynamic differential scalar polarizabilities at 10.6 μm for lutetium ion clock transitions, enabling precise BBR shift evaluations.

Findings

BBR shifts for two lutetium ion transitions are quantified.

The $^1S_0 ightarrow {^3D_1}$ transition has the lowest BBR shift among optical clocks.

Results support lutetium ion as a promising candidate for highly accurate optical clocks.

Abstract

We measure the dynamic differential scalar polarizabilities at 10.6 $\mu$m for two candidate clock transitions in $^{176}\mathrm{Lu}^+$. The fractional black body radiation (BBR) shifts at 300 K for the $^1S_0 \leftrightarrow {^3D_1}$ and $^1S_0 \leftrightarrow {^3D_2}$ transitions are evaluated to be $-1.36\,(9) \times 10^{-18}$ and $2.70 \,(21) \times10^{-17}$, respectively. The former is the lowest of any established optical atomic clock.