Rydberg spectroscopy of trapped Holmium atoms*

Holmium atoms have the potential for collective encoding of multi-qubit quantum registers in a large manifold of 128 hyperfine/Zeeman ground states. We report on studies of optical pumping of laser cooled and optically trapped Ho atoms to the $|F,M\rangle=|11,0\rangle$ or $|F,M\rangle=|11,11\rangle$ ground states. Two-photon Rydberg excitation using near degenerate 410.5 and 415 nm beams has minimal Doppler broadening. Progress towards Rydberg spectroscopy using the optically pumped sample will be presented.