Spectroscopy of Metastable Trapped ¹⁷³Yb⁺ for quantum information and fundamental science

The metastable ²F^o_7/2 state in ¹⁷¹Yb⁺ is increasingly being utilized as a resource for quantum information processing, but the more complex (and potentially more useful) hyperfine structure of this state for the deformed-nucleus ytterbium-173 isotope is experimentally unexplored. Predictions, however, point to unique aspects of the hyperfine interaction in this case, including hyperfine quenching of the metastable state lifetime to a technologically attractive level [Dzuba et al. 2018] and the potential to resolve a 4 orders of magnitude discrepancy in the nuclear magnetic octupole moment of ytterbium-173 [Xiao et al. 2019, de Groote et al. 2020]. We present new measurements of the hyperfine structure in ¹⁷³Yb⁺ and progress toward achieving Hz-level accuracy of the splittings in the ²F^o_7/2 state.