Blackbody Radiation Shifts for 171Yb+ Optical Clock Transitions

Measurements of the scalar and tensor differential atomic polarisabilities have been made for two optical clock transitions in 171Yb+. The experiments were carried out using an electric field with mid-infrared frequency, making the results directly applicable to blackbody radiation (BBR) frequency shifts for thermal environments close to room-temperature. The results lead to a several-fold reduction in the achievable BBR fractional frequency shift uncertainty for the E2 clock transition, and the BBR shift uncertainty for the E3 clock transition agrees well with an independent measurement