Coherent excitation of the highly forbidden electric octupole transition in ${}^{172}$Yb${}^{+}$

Henning A. Fürst, Chih-Han Yeh, Dimitri Kalincev +7

We report on the first coherent excitation of the highly forbidden ${}^2{S}_{1/2}\to {}^2{F}_{7/2}$ electric octupole (E3) transition in a single trapped ${}^{172}$Yb${}^{+}$ ion, an…