Precision measurement of the branching fractions of the 4P3/2 decay of Ca II

We perform precision measurements of the branching ratios of the 4P3/2 level decay of a single 40Ca+ ion suspended in a linear Paul trap. High precision is achieved by a novel technique based on monitoring the population transfer when repeatedly pumping the ion between different internal states. The branching fractions into the 4S1/2, 3D5/2 and 3D3/2 levels are found to be 0.9347(3), 0.0587(2) and 0.00661(4), respectively. For the branching ratio A(P3/2-S1/2)/\sum_J A(P3/2-D_J)=14.31(5), we find a forty-fold improvement in accuracy as compared to the best previous measurement.