Accurate Determination of Blackbody Radiation Shifts in a Strontium Molecular Lattice Clock

Abstract

Molecular lattice clocks enable the search for new physics, such as fifth forces or temporal variations of fundamental constants, in a manner complementary to atomic clocks. Blackbody radiation (BBR) is a major contributor to the systematic error budget of conventional atomic clocks and is notoriously difficult to characterize and control. Here, we combine infrared Stark-shift spectroscopy in a molecular lattice clock and modern quantum chemistry methods to characterize the polarizabilities of the Sr$_2$ molecule from dc to infrared. Using this description, we determine the static and dynamic blackbody radiation shifts for all possible vibrational clock transitions to the $10^{-16}$ level. This constitutes an important step towards mHz-level molecular spectroscopy in Sr$_2$, and provides a framework for evaluating BBR shifts in other homonuclear molecules.