Metastable level lifetimes from electron-shelving measurements with ion clouds and single ions
Abstract
The lifetime of the 3d^2D_5/2-level in singly-ionized calcium has been measured by the electron-shelving technique on different samples of rf trapped ions. The metastable state has been directly populated by exciting the dipole-forbidden 4S_1/2 - 3D_5/2 transition. In ion clouds, the natural lifetime of this metastable level has been measured to be (1095+-27) ms. For the single-ion case, we determined a lifetime of (1152+-20) ms. The 1sigma-error bars at the 2%-level have different origins for the two kinds of experiments: data fitting methods for lifetime measurements in an ion cloud and control of experimental parameters for a single ion. De-shelving effects are extensively discussed. The influence of differing approaches for the processing of the single-ion quantum jump data on the lifetime values is shown. Comparison with recent measurements shows excellent agreement when evaluated from a given method.
Cite
@article{arxiv.physics/0309094,
title = {Metastable level lifetimes from electron-shelving measurements with ion clouds and single ions},
author = {Martina Knoop and Caroline Champenois and Gaëtan Hagel and Marie Houssin and Caroline Lisowski and Michel Vedel and Fernande Vedel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/0309094},
year = {2009}
}