Measurement of the N^{+} 2s2p^{3} ^{5}S_{2}^{o} level lifetime using a heavy-ion storage ring

The slow electric-dipole intercombination decay of the 2s2p(3) S-5(2)0 level in the C-like ion N+, which appears in the auroral airglow spectrum, has been optically observed from ions circulating in a storage ring. A result of 5.88 +/- 0.03 ms was obtained for the natural lifetime of this level. This represents an improvement in precision by a factor of 10 compared to previous radio-frequency and electrostatic ion trap work and is in slight disagreement with the latest theoretical values. [S1050-2947(98)02812-1].