Towards an Optical Lattice Clock Based on Neutral Mercury

We are investigating the possibilities of using neutral mercury as a new species to realize a highly accurate atomic clock using the non-perturbing dipole lattice trapping scheme. Typically, accuracy below 10^-17 is targeted. This proceeding outlines some properties of neutral mercury which are relevant to an optical lattice clock. We also present our on-going work towards the realization of the mercury optical lattice clock. Design considerations are made about the main subsystems. Recent work on these subsystems is described.