Abstract
Measurements are reported of the fluorescence from laser excitation of the resonance line of 138Ba I. Because of the presence of intermediate metastable D states, this atom behaves as a three-level system, and is suitable for the investigation of quantum jumps. Such quantum jumps occur when a system makes an abrupt transition into a third metastable state; the “shelving” of the atom in the state is reflected by the cessation of resonance fluorescence. The rate of photon emission was studied for single atoms which were known to be still fluorescing at some later time. This rate was found to be constant, in agreement with a quantum jump description and in disagreement with one-time counting distributions based on published values of the branching ratio for decays from the resonance level.
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