Hyperfine Coherence in the Presence of Spontaneous Photon Scattering

The coherence of a hyperfine-state superposition of a trapped 9Be+ ion in the presence of off-resonant light is studied experimentally. It is shown that Rayleigh elastic scattering of photons that does not change state populations also does not affect coherence. We observe coherence times that exceed the average scattering time of 19 photons which is determined from measured Stark shifts. This result implies that, with sufficient control over its parameters, laser light can be used to manipulate hyperfine-state superpositions with very little decoherence.