Beam-laser lifetime measurements of Yb ii energy levels

Laser excitation of a fast beam of Yb⁺ ions has been used to make measurements of the radiative lifetimes of eight Yb ii energy levels, four of which were excited via transitions from the ion-trap metastable level 4f¹³6s² ²{F}7/2ᵒ$. Comparison is made with the lifetimes that may be derived from the semiempirical pseudorelativistic Hartree-Fock calculation by Fawcett and Wilson [At. Data Nucl. Data Tables 48, 241 (1991)], the agreement being within 50% for seven of the eight levels considered.