Precision measurement of branching fractions of ¹³⁸Ba⁺: Testing many body theories below one percent level

The branching fractions from the excited state 6P_1/2 of singly charged barium ion has been measured with a precision 0.05% in an ion trap experiment. This measurement along with the known value of the upper state life-time allowed the determination of the dipole matrix elements for the transitions P-S and P-D to below one percent level. Therefore, for the first time it is now possible to compare the many body calculations of these matrix elements at level which is of significance to any parity non-conservation experiment on barium ion. Moreover, these dipole matrix elements are the most significant contributors to the parity violating matrix element between the S-D transition, contributing upto 90% to the total. Our results on the dipole matrix elements are 3.306pm0.014 and 3.036pm0.016 for the S-P and P-D transitions respectively.