Sub-Hertz Optical Transitions in Excited Yb^{+}.

Authors

Patrick McMillin, Hassan Farhat, William Liu, Wesley C Campbell

Published in

Physical review letters. Volume 137. Issue 5. Pages 053002. Jul 31, 2026.

Abstract

We present the observation of three semiforbidden transitions in singly ionized ytterbium from the metastable ^{2}F_{7/2}^{o} state. Owing to the long lifetimes of both the upper and lower states involved, these transitions are narrow and complement those already frequently used in this atom for quantum information and searches for new physics. We report the absolute frequencies of these electric quadrupole transitions, their isotope shifts, hyperfine structure, and measurements of the quadrupole transition moments. We find that the spontaneous lifetimes of these excited states are limited by slow magnetic dipole emission to lower-lying, odd-parity states, the lowest of which is accessible by laser excitation from ^{2}F_{7/2}^{o} and is an attractive candidate for hosting a long-lived qubit.

PMID:
42606478
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 17 Aug 2026.

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