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Precision measurement of lifetime and branching ratios of the $4 f^{13} 5 d 6 s^{1} {[5 / 2]}_{5 / 2}$ state in ${Yb}^{+}$ ions

Midhuna Duraisamy Suganthi ^1,2,*, Visal So ¹, Abhishek Menon ¹, George Tomaras ^1,2, Roman Zhuravel ¹, and Guido Pagano ^1,†

¹Department of Physics and Astronomy and Smalley-Curl Institute, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA
²Applied Physics Graduate Program, Smalley-Curl Institute, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA

^*Contact author: md76@rice.edu
^†Contact author: pagano@rice.edu

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Phys. Rev. Research 7, 043242 – Published 2 December, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/mwwc-kng1

Abstract

We report spectroscopic and time-resolved experimental observations to characterize the $[Xe] 4 f^{13} ({}^{2}F_{5 / 2}^{o}) 5 d 6 s ({}^{1}D)^{1} {[5 / 2]}_{5 / 2}^{o}$ state in ${}^{172}{Yb}^{+}$ ions. We access this state from the metastable $4 f^{14} 5 d ({}^{2}D_{3 / 2, 5 / 2})$ manifold and observe an unexpectedly long lifetime of $τ = 37.9 (9) µ s$ that allows visible Rabi oscillations and resolved-sideband spectroscopy. Using a combination of coherent population dynamics, high-fidelity detection and heralded state preparation, and optical pumping methods, we measure the branching ratios to the ${}^{2}D_{3 / 2}, {}^{2}D_{5 / 2}$ , and ${}^{2}S_{1 / 2}$ states to be $0.359 (2)$ , 0.639(2), and $0.0023 (16)$ , respectively. The branching ratio to the $4 f^{13} 6 s^{2} ({{}^{2}F}_{7 / 2})$ is compatible with zero within our experimental resolution. We also report measurements of Landé $g$ -factor of the $^{1} {[5 / 2]}_{5 / 2}^{o}$ state. Further, the branching ratio of the ${}^{2}D_{5 / 2}$ to ${}^{2}S_{1 / 2}$ decay in ${}^{172}{Yb}^{+}$ was measured to be 0.188(3), improving its relative uncertainty by an order of magnitude. Our measurements provide experimental benchmarks for better understanding the atomic structure of ${Yb}^{+}$ ions, which still lacks accurate numerical descriptions, and the use of high-lying excited states for partial detection and qubit manipulation in the omg architecture.

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Phys. Rev. Research 7, 043242– Published 2 December, 2025

Vol. 7, Iss. 4 — December - December 2025

Received 10 June 2025
Accepted 23 September 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/mwwc-kng1

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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Precision measurement of lifetime and branching ratios of the $4 f^{13} 5 d 6 s^{1} {[5 / 2]}_{5 / 2}$ state in ${Yb}^{+}$ ions

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Precision measurement of lifetime and branching ratios of the 4f135d6s1[5/2]5/2 state in Yb+ ions

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Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

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References (51)

Precision measurement of lifetime and branching ratios of the $4 f^{13} 5 d 6 s^{1} {[5 / 2]}_{5 / 2}$ state in ${Yb}^{+}$ ions