Clock-related properties of Lu+

TL;DR

This paper investigates the properties of singly-ionized lutetium (Lu+) relevant for optical clock development, using high-precision relativistic methods to analyze systematic effects, polarizability, and potential for fundamental physics tests.

Contribution

The study provides detailed calculations of Lu+ properties, including systematic effects and polarizability, supporting its use in optical clocks and fundamental constant variation searches.

Findings

Systematic effects due to electric-field gradients are characterized.

Polarizability of the 5d6s 1D_2 state is predicted.

Lu+ is identified as a promising candidate for fundamental physics tests.

Abstract

The singly-ionized lutetium has a number of fortuitous properties well suited for a design of an optical clock and corresponding applications. In this work, we study Lu+ properties relevant to a development of the clock using the relativistic high-precision method combining configuration interaction and the linearized coupled-cluster approaches. The systematic effects due to interaction of an external electric-field gradient with the quadrupole moment and the dynamic correction to the blackbody radiation shift are studied and uncertainties are estimated. The value of the 5d6s 1D_2 polarizability is predicted. We also demonstrate that Lu+ is a good candidate to search for variation of the fine-structure constant.