Ion storage technique for very long living states: The decay rate of the 5D 3/2 state of Ba II

The metastable 5D _3/2 state of Ba⁺ is used to demonstrate the possibility of the ion storage technique for the measurement of extremely long lived states. The ions are confined in a r.f. quadrupole trap and excited by a strong pulsed tunable dye laser to the 6P _1/2 state which partially decays into the 5D _3/2 state. Sampling of the time development of the ground state population leads to the determination of the 5D _3/2 decay rate. Using He as a buffer gas at a pressure of about 10^?6 mbar to initially store the ions, varying the gas density and extrapolating to zero pressure, we find for the lifetime \(\tau _{D_{3/2} } = 17.5 \pm 4s\) .