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

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 coll inear laser-beam-ion-beam spectroscopy technique. Like previously meas ured precision lifetimes of light alkali-metal-like systems, these dat a fall significantly higher than calculations by the most recent multi configuration Hartree-Fock and relativistic many-body perturbation the ories. Discrepancies between experiment and theory for alkali-metal-li ke systems have implications for the interpretation of parity-violatio n research.