Ar-39 Detection at the 10^-16 Isotopic Abundance Level with Atom Trap Trace Analysis

Abstract

Atom Trap Trace Analysis (ATTA), a laser-based atom counting method, has been applied to analyze atmospheric Ar-39 (half-life = 269 yr), a cosmogenic isotope with an isotopic abundance of 8x10^-16. In addition to the superior selectivity demonstrated in this work, counting rate and efficiency of ATTA have been improved by two orders of magnitude over prior results. Significant applications of this new analytical capability lie in radioisotope dating of ice and water samples and in the development of dark matter detectors.

References in corpus (6)

• First Dark Matter Results from the XENON100 Experiment
• One million year old groundwater in the Sahara revealed by krypton-81 and chlorine-36
• First results from a Dark Matter search with liquid Argon at 87 K in the Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory
• Tracing Noble Gas Radionuclides in the Environment
• A New Method of Measuring 81Kr and 85Kr Abundances in Environmental Samples
• A spectroscopic study of the cycling transition 4s[3/2]_2-4p[5/2]_3 at 811.8 nm in Ar-39: Hyperfine structure and isotope shift

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• Detection of Chern numbers and entanglement in topological two-species systems through subsystem winding numbers
• Weak interaction studies at SARAF
• Precisely Spun Super Rotors
• Application of the Most Frequent Value Method for ${}^{39}$Ar Half-Life Determination
• Bichromatic force on metastable Argon for Atom Trap Trace Analysis
• Ion Current as a Precise Measure of the Loading Rate of a Magneto-Optical Trap
• Optically enhanced discharge excitation and trapping of ${}^{39}Ar$
• A New Neutron Lifetime Experiment with Cold Neutron Beam Decay in Superfluid Helium-4
• Robust Lifetime Estimation from HPGe Radiation-Sensor Time Series Using Pairwise Ratios and MFV Statistics
• Tracer Applications of Noble Gas Radionuclides in the Geosciences