Radiative Lifetime of Metastable Li II2S01

Abstract

The radiative lifetime of Li II $2{}_{}{}^1{}_{}{}^{}S_0^{}{}_{}{}^{}$ has been measured by counting decay photons versus time from an ensemble of metastable Li ions stored in a simple electromagnetic trap of the Penning variety. The result is ${\tau }_{\mathrm{expt}}=503\mathrm{}\left(26\right)\mathrm{}$ μsec. The error represents one standard deviation from the mean of a series of 34 separate determinations. This result is in agreement with the theoretical value ${\tau }_{\mathrm{th}}=513\mathrm{}$ μsec.