Spontaneous emission lifetime of a single trapped Ca+ ion in a high finesse cavity -: art. no. 203002

We investigate the spontaneous emission lifetime of a single trapped Ca-40(+) ion placed at different positions in the vacuum standing wave inside a high finesse cavity which is stabilized to the atomic transition. The lifetime is measured by quantum state detection after pi-pulse excitation. The result for the natural lifetime of the D-5/2 metastable state of 1161(22) ms agrees, within 1 standard deviation, with the most precise published value. We observe a reduction of the spontaneous emission lifetime of approximate to15% in the node of the vacuum field.