Determination of the ground state polarizability of $^{162}$Dy near 530 nm

TL;DR

This paper measures the ground-state polarizability of $^{162}$Dy near 530 nm, crucial for optical trapping, and validates results with atomic calculations, aiding the development of dysprosium tweezer arrays.

Contribution

It provides the first precise experimental determination of dysprosium's ground-state polarizability near 530 nm, informing trapping strategies.

Findings

Quantitative agreement with atomic-structure calculations.

Identification of wavelength-dependent polarizability contributions.

Enhanced understanding of dysprosium's electronic transitions.

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 particularly challenging to characterize accurately. 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.