Precision measurement of the branching fractions of the 5p 2 P 1/2 state in 88 Sr + with a single ion in a micro fabricated surface trap

TL;DR

This study precisely measured the decay branching fractions of a specific excited state in a single Sr+ ion using advanced photon-counting techniques within a microfabricated surface trap, confirming theoretical predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a high-precision measurement of the 5p 2 P 1/2 state decay in 88 Sr+ using a novel photon-counting method in a micro trap, improving accuracy over previous experiments.

Findings

Branching fraction p = 0.9453 +0.0007 -0.0005 for decay into ground state.

Results agree with recent theory, differ from older measurements.

Demonstrates the effectiveness of microfabricated traps for precision spectroscopy.

Abstract

We measured the branching fractions for the decay of the 5p 2 P 1/2 state of 88 Sr + by applying a recently demonstrated photon-counting sequential method (M. Ramm et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 023004) to a single ion laser-cooled in a micro fabricated surface trap. The branching fraction for the decay into the 5s 2 S 1/2 ground level was found to be p = 0.9453 +0.0007 --0.0005. This result is in good agreement with recent theoretical calculations but disagrees with previous experimental measurements, however affected by a one order of magnitude larger uncertainty. This experiment also demonstrates the reliability and the performances of ion micro trap technology in the domain of precision measurements and spectroscopy. PACS numbers: 32.70.Cs, 06.30.Ft, 37.10.Ty