It’s been a while since my last post as it’s all go here at the lab right now in preparation for a busy month of running.
Desperately trying to finish off the analysis of our last radioactive beam fusion experiment (the fusion of magnesium-23 with hydrogen in novae), I’m also in preps for three other experiments coming up imminently.
The first, a test experiment, starts on monday when we intend to implant stable aluminium into very thin carbon targets to prove that we can eventually use this method to create radioactive aluminium targets. This is a fairly trivial exercise but we’re short-staffed to do this simple job so it will be a busy few days.
Soon after, TRIUMF’s ISOL system will start up with a silicon-carbide production target and a ‘FEBIAD’ (Forced Electron Beam Ion-Arc Discharge) ion source to produce an intense radioactive fluorine-18 beam for two astrophysics experiments. The first of these is an elastic scattering experiment designed to probe quantum energy levels in neon-19 (which is what is made when fluorine-18 fuses with hydrogen) of astrophysical interest. The second is a DRAGON experiment where we will measure directly the fusion of fluorine-18 with hydrogen, and experiment that has not been done before due to lack of an intense enough beam.
So expect radio silence from me at least until mid-next week, but then I shall be blogging about the daily activities of the fluorine-18 experiments and you will hopefully get an insight into the drama, banality, trials, fortunes, etc…of a nuclear physics experiment! 🙂
