Energy Levels and Transition Rates of Laser-Cooling Candidate Th^-

TL;DR

This study experimentally determined energy levels and transition rates of Th^- ions, identifying new excited states and measuring lifetimes, confirming its potential for laser cooling applications.

Contribution

The paper provides the first experimental measurements of energy levels and transition rates of Th^-, including new excited states and refined lifetime data, advancing laser cooling research.

Findings

Three new excited states of Th^- identified.

Measured lifetime of the main E1 transition is 30 microseconds.

Th^- confirmed as a promising laser-cooling candidate.

Abstract

The energy levels and transition rates of promising laser-cooling candidate thorium anion Th^- have been experimentally obtained in the current work. Three new excited states between the bound-bound electric dipole (E1) transition of Th^- are observed now, and their energy levels are determined to be 1,847(13), 3,166.8(59) and 3,666(12) cm^{-1}, respectively. Meanwhile, the lifetime of the upper state of that E1 transition is experimentally determined to be 30(2) microseconds, about 3 times shorter than the previous calculated result 86 microseconds, which makes Th^- the most promising candidate for laser cooling of negative ions. Furthermore, the lifetimes of two other short-lived odd-parity excited states of Th^- are also measured to be 59(4) and 53(3)microseconds, respectively.