This award provides partial support for operating the Purdue Rare Isotope Measurement Laboratory (PRIME Lab), an accelerator mass spectrometry facility making use of an FN (8 megavolt) tandem accelerator to measure extremely small concentrations of rare cosmogenic radioactive nuclides of beryllium-10, carbon-14, aluminum-26, silicon-32, chlorine-36, calcium-41, and iodine-129. The accelerator mass spectrometry technique is uniquely capable of analyzing these isotopes, and PRIME Lab is operated as a national resource for such analyses on behalf of the U.S. geochemical research community. Accurate measurements of these nuclides in natural samples enable determination of ages and can also be used as tracers to reconstruct the migration of volumes of the solid earth, oceans, ground and surface waters, and the atmosphere. In- house and outside user projects needing such analyses include researchers in solid earth sciences, planetary sciences, atmospheric sciences, ecology, archeology, and a wide range of applications directed at global change research.
