A Single Folded Beam Magneto-Optical Trap System for Neutral Mercury Atoms

Mercury is a promising candidate for the optical lattice clock, due to its low sensitivity to the blackbody radiation. We develop a single folded beam magneto-optical trap for the neutral mercury optical lattice clock, with a 253.7 nm frequency quadrupled laser. Up to 1.7\times10^6 (^202Hg) or 1.5\times10^6 (^199Hg) atoms can be captured, and the atom temperature is lowered to 170 μK (^202Hg) or 50 μK (^199Hg). The cold atom signals of all six rich abundant isotopes are observed in this system.