Physical Review A
6pP2 levels of ionized barium: Lifetimes and depolarization cross sections
F. M. Kelly, M. S. Mathur
Abstract
The Hanle effect and its variation with density has been used to determine the depolarization cross section for collisions between the $^{2}P_{\frac{3}{2}}$ barium ions and neutral atoms. An extrapolation of the data to zero density gives a value of the average lifetime $\ensuremath{\tau}=6.22$ ns for the $6p^{2}P_{\frac{3}{2}}$ level. A further experiment gives $\ensuremath{\tau}=7.55$ ns for the $6p^{2}P_{\frac{1}{2}}$ level.