Moving the VERA particle accelerator back into its shell

© Andreas Wiederin

Title of the project: Establishing a spike material for the analysis of environmental 237Np by mass-spectrometry
Name of the VDSP student: Andreas Wiederin
Project supervised by: Robin Golser, Karin Hain

I am a PhD student in the Isotope Physics group of Robin Golser. VERA (Vienna Environmental Research Accelerator), the machine I am working on, is a leading Accelerator Mass Spectrometry facility for a wide range of isotopes and the first worldwide utilize selective photo-detachment in an RFQ ion cooler for the suppression of atomic isobars. When I am not busy with my PHD, I try to get out into the hills and mountains for climbing, ski touring, mountain biking, and occasionally some alpine adventures with crampons and ice axes.

My research aims to make 237-Np, the second most abundant anthropogenic actinide in the environment, accessible as a tracer for fields like oceanography. We hope to overcome the difficulties that hindered quantitative analysis by mass spectrometric methods using our ILIAMS (Ion Laser InterAction Mass Spectrometry) setup at the VERA AMS lab hidden away in the picturesque “Kavalierstrakt” of Währingerstraße 17. While the data from counting experiments itself is visually unassuming, the hands-on approach required for research on a 50m long beamline sometimes offers surprising views. The image shows the 3MV electrostatic tandem accelerator being reinserted into its isolation tank after maintenance. In this particular case "hands on" means crawling into the tank and scrubbing it from the inside for a few hours. And yes, we used a glove to seal of the beamline against dust and insects.

Golser group