High Efficiency Noble Gas Trace Analysis employing a magneto-optical trap for Earth Sciences and Non-proliferation Studies

本项目旨在实现一种具有单原子探测能力的高效激光原子阱，用于稀有气体痕量分析，并在地球科学和核不扩散领域具有开创性的应用。与其他稀有气体分析方法相比，样本量可以减少两个数量级，从而允许当前标准方法无法获得的新应用。我们将集中讨论稀有的氪同位素，因为它具有广泛的重要应用领域和相对容易获得的激光冷却技术。在这里提出的第一个3年资助期内，我们将专注于仪器开发和首次试点研究，以证明小样本量和高时间分辨率在不同科学领域的适用性，如地下水研究、核不扩散核查和气象模型验证。该系统的高效率将基于二维和三维磁光原子阱与稀有气体原子直接光激发的独特组合。我们将通过测量感兴趣的同位素与已知浓度的同位素的比值来确定其浓度。为了减少系统误差和测量时间，该系统特别设计用于同时计数两种同位素。将特别注意提取未改变的测量样品，以便重新用于更好的统计、实验室相互比较练习、样品校准、与其他分析技术一起使用和存档储存。

The idea of this project is to realize a high efficient laser atom trap with single atom detection capability for rare gas trace analysis with several groundbreaking applications in Earth sciences and nuclear non-proliferation. Compared to other methods of rare gas analysis the sample size can be reduced by two orders of magnitude allowing for new applications not accessible to current standard methods. We will concentrate on rare krypton isotopes for its wide area of important applications and its relatively good accessibility to laser cooling techniques. In the first 3-year funding period proposed here, we will concentrate on the instrumental development and first pilot studies demonstrating the applicability of small sample sizes and high temporal resolution in different fields of science as diverse as groundwater research, nuclear non-proliferation verification and meteorological model validation.The high efficiency of the proposed system will be based on a unique combination of a 2- and 3-dimensional magneto-optical atom trap with direct optical excitation of the noble gas atoms. We will determine the concentration of the isotope of interest by measuring its ratio with respect to an isotope with known concentration. To reduce systematic errors and measurement time, the system is especially designed for counting both isotopes simultaneously. Special care will be taken to extract the measured sample unaltered for reuse for better statistics, laboratory intercomparison exercises, calibration of samples, use with other analyzing techniques and archival storage.