Toward a mercury optical lattice clock: Development of a dipole lattice trap at the magic wavelength

We describe our work to develop an optical lattice clock using neutral mercury, which has the potential to reach accuracy near 1 part in 10¹⁸ owing to its low sensitivity to black body radiation. We describe developments of our experimental setup to allow dipole lattice trapping and spectroscopy in the Lamb-Dicke regime. Specifically, we report on the implementation of a low noise imaging and detection system, on the characterization of the magneto-optic trap from which the dipole trap will be loaded, on the implementation of the dipole lattice trap itself, a challenging task given the wavelength and power requirements.