Testing many-body theory using a single barium ion
Prof. Dr. Manas Mukherjee (Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore, Singapore)

Historically, barium is the first ion that was trapped and laser cooled. The main reason has been the easy availability of the lasers at the required wavelengths to cool the ion. However, over time it was recognized that barium offers more functionality. It is one of the heavy elements where parity non- conserving weak interaction plays an important role in its atomic spectra. More recently with the availability of infra-red diode lasers there is a renewed interest in quantum information processing with its narrow dipole forbidden transition. In this talk, recent measurements of the branching fractions for its dipole allowed transition will be discussed along with its consequence towards our understanding of the strongly co-related quantum many electron systems. The achieved precision is well below 1% for both the p-state fine structures. Furthermore, the recent progress on coherent manipulation of the quadrupole transition using all diode lasers will also be discussed.