The Nuclear Science Laboratory (NSL) at the University of Notre Dame (ND) operates a world-renowned scientific program in nuclear astrophysics, nuclear structure and radioactive beam physics, as well as in nuclear physics applications, radiation chemistry, and material analysis. A very successful Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) program dedicated to nuclear astrophysics, aimed at complementing the existing laboratory measurement and detection techniques, and based on the FN accelerator was added in 2003. This MRI will allow the lab to modify the low energy injection system of the tandem to provide the high mass resolution necessary for improved isotopic selectivity. The modified system will extend measurement capabilities and expand the broad portfolio of available accelerated beams, making the NSL a unique and world-leading facility for both the development of new highly sensitive detection techniques and for the measurements of isotopic ratios not yet possible.
The MRI will provide the Notre Dame AMS facility with the capability of measuring radioactive probes and developing innovative AMS detection techniques that only two other facilities worldwide (Technische Universität München - Munich) and Australian National University - Canberra) can also provide due to the combination of available energies, detection techniques and scope of scientific program. The radioactive probes allow us to better understand current supernovae models and stellar nucleosynthesis, and provide evidence of injection of freshly synthesized material into the proto solar system as well as by possible nearby supernova events in the more recent past. In order to exploit these long-lived probes new innovative detection techniques have been developed.
The new injection system will also greatly enhance our efforts in applied techniques that have recently received considerable interest both locally and nationally, resulting in new collaborations with the art world and the art history community to provide state-of-the-art identification of artifacts. This program introduces non-physics faculty to the benefit of new analytical methods in fields as diverse as anthropology, archaeology and art history and attracts their students into the NSL to take advantage of new research opportunities. The improved AMS sensitivity also opens the door to a number of exciting programs to use radioactive tracers to probe the history of early Earth as well as a number of important paleoclimatic and geological records.
