https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/20136303003
AMS measurements of cosmogenic and supernova-ejected radionuclides in deep-sea sediment cores
1 University of Vienna, Faculty of Physics, VERA Laboratory, Währingerstrasse 17, 1090 Vienna, Austria
2 Department of Nuclear Physics, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia
3 Physics Department, TU Munich, James-Franck-Straße, 85748 Garching, Germany
4 Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Bautzner Landstraße 400, 01328 Dresden, Germany
a e-mail: jenny.feige@univie.ac.at
Published online: 19 December 2013
Samples of two deep-sea sediment cores from the Indian Ocean are analyzed with accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) to search for traces of recent supernova activity ~2 Myr ago. Here, long-lived radionuclides, which are synthesized in massive stars and ejected in supernova explosions, namely 26Al, 53Mn and 60Fe, are extracted from the sediment samples. The cosmogenic isotope 10Be, which is mainly produced in the Earth's atmosphere, is analyzed for dating purposes of the marine sediment cores. The first AMS measurement results for 10Be and 26Al are presented, which represent for the first time a detailed study in the time period of 1.7-3.1 Myr with high time resolution. Our first results do not support a significant extraterrestrial signal of 26Al above terrestrial background. However, there is evidence that, like 10Be, 26Al might be a valuable isotope for dating of deep-sea sediment cores for the past few million years.
© Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2013
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
