Development towards ⁵³Mn Accelerator Mass Spectrometry capabilities at the University of Notre Dame

Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) with ⁵³Mn has geological applications as a chronometer for exposure and burial times for discontinuously deposited sediments. It has also been used to search for evidence of recent supernovae events, and proposed as a proxy to monitor the variation in the galactic cosmic ray spectrum over time. The current sensitivity limit amongst active facilities is ⁵³Mn/ ⁵⁵Mn = 3×10⁻¹³ while a sensitivity of ⁵³Mn/ ⁵⁵Mn = 1×10⁻¹³ is necessary to fully exploit ⁵³Mn's capabilities. At the University of Notre Dame's Nuclear Science Laboratory (NSL), a 10 MV tandem accelerator and a Browne–Buechner Spectrograph operated as a gas-filled magnet were used to separate ⁵³Mn from ⁵³Cr. Samples covering ranges of ⁵³Mn/ ⁵⁵Mn = 10⁻¹⁰−10⁻⁸ were measured for the first time at the NSL using various settings resulting in a background level of ⁵³Mn/ ⁵⁵Mn =6.2(3)×10⁻¹¹. Analysis of the results, descriptions of experimental settings, and further explorations will be presented in this paper.