Frequency Metrology on single trapped ions in the weak binding limit: The 3s1/2-3p3/2 transition in 24-Mg+

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel precision spectroscopy method for trapped ions in the weak binding limit, achieving highly accurate measurements of the 24-Mg+ D2 transition frequency and excited state lifetime.

Contribution

The authors introduce a technique for spectroscopy in the unresolved motional sideband regime, significantly improving measurement accuracy for ion transition frequencies.

Findings

Measured the D2 transition frequency as 1072082934.33(16) MHz, a 400-fold improvement.

Determined the excited state lifetime to be 3.84(10) ns.

Demonstrated suppression of line profile distortions in trapped ion spectroscopy.

Abstract

We demonstrate a method for precision spectroscopy on trapped ions in the limit of unresolved motional sidebands. By sympathetic cooling of a chain of crystallized ions we suppress adverse temperature variations induced by the spectroscopy laser that usually lead to a distorted line profle and obtain a Voigt profile with negligible distortions. We applied the method to measure the absolute frequency of the astrophysically relevant D2 transition in single 24-Mg+ ions and find 1072082934.33(16)MHz, a nearly 400fold improvement over previous results. Further, we find the excited state lifetime to be 3.84(10) ns.