State-dependent interactions in ultracold 174Yb probed by optical clock spectroscopy

Abstract

We report on the measurement of the scattering properties of ultracold ^174 Yb bosons in a three-dimensional optical lattice. Site occupancy in an atomic Mott insulator is resolved with high-precision spectroscopy on an ultranarrow, metrological optical clock transition. Scattering lengths and loss rate coefficients for ^174 Yb atoms in different collisional channels involving the ground state ^1 S _0 and the metastable ^3 P _0 states are derived. These studies set important constraints for future experimental studies of two-electron atoms for quantum-technological applications.

Keywords

• two-electron atoms
• clock transition
• state-dependant interactions
• Mott insulator
• high-resolution spectroscopy