• DOI:10.1103/PhysRevA.90.060501
• Corpus ID: 119297228

Measurement of the branching fractions and lifetime of the 5 D 5 /2 level of Ba +

@article{Auchter2014MeasurementOT,
  title={Measurement of the branching fractions and lifetime of the 5 D 5 /2 level of Ba +},
  author={Carolyn Auchter and Thomas W. Noel and Matthew R. Hoffman and Spencer R. Williams and Boris B. Blinov},
  journal={Physical Review A},
  year={2014},
  volume={90},
  pages={060501}
}

• Carolyn Auchter, T. Noel, +2 authors B. Blinov
• Published 2 September 2014
• Physics
• Physical Review A

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.