Experimental set-up for study of collisions of cold mercury atoms for optical frequency clocks

Abstract

We present an experimental set-up of two species mercury-rubidium magneto-optical trap (MOT). The preliminary studies of interactions in mercury MOT and mercury-rubidium MOT are presented. In bosons with the s2 configuration the clock transition 1S0-3P0 is strictly forbidden. The commonly used method to overcome this problem is to induce a coupling with 3P0 state with a state which is optically accessible. In the mercury-rubidium MOT, the presence of cold Rb atoms might be used to tune the probability of the 1S0-3P0 clock transition in mercury.