Laser spectroscopy of the 1001nm ground state transition in dysprosium

Abstract

We present the first direct excitation of the presumably ultra-narrow $1001\text{nm}$ ground state transition in atomic dysproium. By using resonance ionization spectroscopy with pulsed Ti:sapphire lasers at a hot cavity laser ion source, we were able to measure the isotopic shifts in the $1001\text{nm}$ line between all seven stable isotopes. Furthermore, we determined the upper level energy from the atomic transition frequency of the ${}^{164}\text{Dy}$ isotope as $9991.004(1){\text{cm}}^{-1}$ and confirm the level energy listed in the NIST database. Since a sufficiently narrow natural linewidth is an essential prerequisite for high precision spectroscopic investigations for fundamental questions we furthermore determined a lower limit of $2.9(1)\mu \text{s}$ for the lifetime of the excited state.