General Seminars

Shawn Bishop, "Nuclear Astrophysics, Geology and Accelerator Mass Spectrometry: The end of an era, or the conception of a beautiful new beginning?"

Europe/Bucharest
Description
The  accelerator  mass  spectrometry  (AMS)  system  at  the  Maier-Leibnitz  tandem  accelerator  laboratory  (MLL),  Technishe  Universitaet  Muenchen,  has  been  a  world  unique  facility  for  astrophysical  research  since  circa  2000.  With  it,  the  detection  of  both  60Fe  (half  life  =  2.6  Myr)  and 53Mn (half life 3.7 Myr)  were made, with their locations in geological time occurring 2.1 Myr before  the  present.  Both  are  produced  in  core  collapse  supernovae  (CCSN),  with  60Fe  almost  exclusively made in CCSN.  Present research goals, in collaboration with members of INFN, are find long-lived actinides 244Pu and/or 247Cm in geological reservoirs, coincident in geological time with these 60F/53Mg signals, and thereby prove that CCSN are a production site in our universe for the heavy elements beyond the iron-peak region of atomic masses.  The  MLL laboratory has been  decommissioned,  meaning  the  potential  loss  of  this  world  unique  AMS  system  for  such  research.

In  this  talk  I  will  give  an  overview  of  the  astrophysical  science  and  results  that  have  been  achieved with this AMS system, the state of the current actinde search, and future prospects for simultaneous  discovery  of  60Fe  with  actinides,  provided  this  AMS  system  can  be  relocated  to  a suitable laboratory with a closely matching tandem accelerator and staff with AMS expertise. Thus,  in  the  later  part  of  this  talk,  I  will  discuss  the  potential  suitability  of  this  system  with  the  9 MeV tandem accelerator of IFIN-HH.