Spectroscopy of the $^{199}$Hg Optical Clock Transition at 265.5 nm

Neutral Hg is an excellent candidate for a stable and accurate atomic clock. The doubly-forbidden clock transition at 265.5 nm can provide an extremely high-quality resonance factor (Q) when confined in an optical lattice at the Stark-shift free ``magic'' wavelength. A key feature of the Hg system is the expected reduced uncertainty of black-body radiation induced Stark shifts compared to other optically-based neutral atom clocks. We demonstrate precision spectroscopy of the $^{1}S_{0}$ - $^{3}P_{0}$ clock transition in $^{199}$Hg in a MOT. The MOT population of $10^6$ atoms was depleted by over 70\% using 3 mW from a cavity-stabilized probe laser tuned to the clock transition. We present our characterization of the transition and efforts to implement a stable Hg clock system.