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PV: Plenarvorträge
PV VIII
PV VIII: Plenary Talk
Tuesday, March 9, 2004, 10:00–10:30, P
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry and astrophysics — •Christof Vockenhuber — Institut für Isotopenforschung und Kernphysik, Universität Wien, Austria
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) is a well-established method to measure extremely low isotopic ratios down to 10−17. By counting single atoms rather than their infrequent decay long-lived radionuclides produced on Earth has been extensively studied with great success.
Beside these ’routine’ measurements AMS allows to investigate radionuclides produced outside the Earth’s environment with mainly astrophysical applications. Some of these (e. g. 60Fe, 182Hf, 244Pu) can naturally only be formed in stellar environments. Thus, finding traces of these nuclides on Earth is a strong indication for a nearby nucleosyntesis event (e. g. supernova) within a few half-lives of the radionuclide.
In addition, the technique used in AMS allows to determine minute cross sections for nuclear reactions of astrophysics relevance, either by measuring samples containing external produced radionuclides (e. g from the reaction 25Mg(p,γ)26Al), or by detecting radionuclides produced inside the accelerator by inverse-reaction kinematics (e. g. 13C(p,γ)13N).
In this talk I will give an overview of various possible AMS measurements related to astrophysics and present first interesting and promising results.