PRECISION LIFETIMES FOR THE CA+ 4P 2P LEVELS - EXPERIMENT CHALLENGES THEORY AT THE 1-PERCENT LEVEL

The mean lifetimes tau of the Ca+ 4p 2P3/2 and 2P1/2 levels have been measured to almost-equal-to 0.3% precision using a variant of the collinear laser-beam-ion-beam spectroscopy technique. Like previously measured precision lifetimes of light alkali-metal-like systems, these data fall significantly higher than calculations by the most recent multiconfiguration Hartree-Fock and relativistic many-body perturbation theories. Discrepancies between experiment and theory for alkali-metal-like systems have implications for the interpretation of parity-violation research.