Direct excitation of the forbidden clock transition in neutral 174Yb atoms confined to an optical lattice

Zeb W. Barber, Chad W. Hoyt, Chris W. Oates +3

We report direct single-laser excitation of the strictly forbidden (6s^2)^1S_0 -(6s6p)^3P_0 clock transition in the even 174Yb isotope confined to a 1D optical lattice. A small (~1…