Development towards 53Mn Accelerator Mass Spectrometry capabilities at the University of Notre Dame

• Published in: Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section B, Beam interactions with materials and atoms Vol. 536; pp. 1 - 6
• Main Authors: Bailey, T.L., Clark, A.M., Callahan, L., Nelson, A.D., Paul, M., Schiffer, M., Blankstein, D., Collon, P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.03.2023
• Subjects: 53Cr; 53Mn; Accelerator Mass Spectrometry; Gas-filled magnet; Accelerator Mass Spectrometry; 53Cr; 53Mn; Gas-filled magnet
• ISSN: 0168-583X; 1872-9584
• DOI: 10.1016/j.nimb.2022.12.011

Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) with  53Mn has geological applications as a chronometer for exposure and burial times for discontinuously deposited sediments. It has also been used to search for evidence of recent supernovae events, and proposed as a proxy to monitor the variation in the galactic cosmic ray spectrum over time. The current sensitivity limit amongst active facilities is  53Mn/ 55Mn = 3×10−13 while a sensitivity of  53Mn/ 55Mn = 1×10−13 is necessary to fully exploit  53Mn’s capabilities. At the University of Notre Dame’s Nuclear Science Laboratory (NSL), a 10 MV tandem accelerator and a Browne–Buechner Spectrograph operated as a gas-filled magnet were used to separate  53Mn from  53Cr. Samples covering ranges of  53Mn/ 55Mn = 10−10−10−8 were measured for the first time at the NSL using various settings resulting in a background level of  53Mn/ 55Mn =6.2(3)×10−11. Analysis of the results, descriptions of experimental settings, and further explorations will be presented in this paper.