Measurement of the branching fractions and lifetime of the $5D_{5/2}$ level of Ba${}^{+}$

Abstract

We present a measurement of the branching fractions for decay from the long-lived $5D_{5/2}$ level in \Ba. The branching fraction for decay into the $6S_{1/2}$ ground state was found to be $0.846(25{)}_{\mathrm{stat}}(4{)}_{\mathrm{sys}}$. We also report an improved measurement of the $5D_{5/2}$ lifetime, ${\tau }_{5D_{5/2}}=31.2(0.9)$~s. Together these measurements provide the first experimental determination of transition rates for decay out of the $5D_{5/2}$ level. The low ($<7\times 10^{-12}$~Torr) pressure in the ion trap in which these measurements were made simplified data acquisition and analysis. Comparison of the experimental results with theoretical predictions of the transition rates shows good agreement.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Towards fault-tolerant quantum computing with trapped ions
• Precision measurement of the branching fractions of the 4P3/2 decay of Ca II
• Precision measurement of the branching ratio in the 6P3/2 decay of BaII with a single trapped ion

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Relativistic semiempirical-core-potential calculations in Ca${}^{+}$, Sr${}^{+}$, and Ba${}^{+}$ ions on Lagrange meshes