Blackbody effects in the Yb optical lattice clock

We report a high accuracy measurement of the differential static polarizability for the clock transition in a Yb lattice clock, a key parameter for determining the blackbody (BBR) shift of this transition. We further report efforts to determine the 〈6s5d³ D₁||D||6s6p³ P₀〉 reduced dipole matrix element, a critical ingredient in the non-static correction to the BBR shift. In all, we have reduced the largest uncertainty in the Yb lattice clock (that stemming from the BBR shift) by an order of magnitude.