Carbon Dating for Interdisciplinary Research and Teaching: Developing 14C AMS at Notre Dame

The purpose of developing 14C Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) at Notre Dame is to provide carbon dating capabilities to researchers internally and to develop a program to introduce AMS techniques to graduate and undergraduate students.

The AMS Group at Notre Dame's Nuclear Science Laboratory uses an NEC MC-SNICS ion source (SNICS), FN Tandem Accelerator, and various detector systems to determine the concentration of isotopes of interest in samples. A retractable compact-IC and offset FCs were used to measure 14C counts and 12C & 13C beam currents in tandem.

Thus far, the maximum 12C current reached on the post-SNICS FC is ~4.3 microamps, the maximum transmission of 12C through the system is ~3.16%, and the average background ratio of 14C/12C is ~2.4x10^-14. Short-term objectives of the 14C project include achieving: 8 microamps of 12C beam current on the post-SNICS FC, a consistent transmission rate of 5%, and a reduction of 14C/12C background to ~5x1o^-15.

For a discussion of preliminary results from these experiments see William Peeler’s CEU abstract, Preliminary Results in the Development of 14C AMS at the University of Notre Dame's Nuclear Science Laboratory. The first results of these experiments and any more recent developments will be presented at the CEU poster session.

This work is supported by the National Science Foundation grant award number NSF PHY-2011890