The
AMS group was formed in early 2003 with the arrival of Professor.
Philippe Collon from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia
University. The development of a new AMS program at Notre Dame, centred
on the renovation and upgrade of a previously installed Browne-Buechner
spectrograph.
Renovated Browne-Beuchner Spectrograph
The Institute for Structure and Nuclear Astrophysics at the University of Notre Dame installed its Browne-Buechner spectrograph in the early 1970’s for highly accurate energy measurements of nuclear reactions. Recent renovation and upgrading of this spectrograph has enabled operation of the magnet in a gas-filled mode, a very useful technique in isobar separation, in particular for the study of nuclear reactions with low cross-sections of interest in nuclear astrophysics. One of the principle issues shared by measurements of extremely low abundances in AMS and nuclear astrophysics is the discrimination between the nuclei of interest and often very intense isobaric background.
In comparison to conventional counting methods, AMS provides a highly powerful counting technique which is totally independent of a radioisotope’s half-life, of great importance in the measurement of astrophysical reactions. Whereas prompt g-counting is still successful in most cases, AMS can provide a different approach removing any uncertainty associated with the detailed knowledge of the branching ratios in the gamma cascade or where there is a lack of g’s in the decay scheme.
More
information about the AMS group
<< Back to Research Facilities
