Radioisotope Detection with the Argonne FN Tandem Accelerator

A standard heavy ion nuclear structure facility has been used to detect several long-lived radioisotopes by counting the accelerated ions. The problem of eliminating strong isobaric background beams has been solved by combining the energy loss dispersion through a uniform A l foil stack with the high momentum resolution of an Enge split-pole magnetic spectrograph. Radioisotope concentrations in the following ranges have been measured: 14 C/ 12 C = 10 –12 to 10 –13 , 26 A l / 27 A l = 10 –10 to 10 –12 , 32 Si/Si = 10 –8 to 10 –14 , 36 C l /C l = 10 –8 to 10 –11

Accelerator mass spectrometry · Atomic physics · FOIL method · Heavy ion · Ion · Isotope · Mass spectrometry · National laboratory · Nuclear physics · Pelletron · Physics · Spectrograph · Tandem · Tandem accelerator · Ion-surface interactions and analysis · Materials Science · Nuclear Physics and Applications · X-ray Spectroscopy and Fluorescence Analysis