Electromagnetic isotope separation as a method of improving the detection limits of accelerator spectrometry

The technique of accelerator spectrometry is a powerful new tool for measuring very small quantities of radioactive atoms (particularly long-lived cosmogenic isotopes) in the presence of much larger quantities of stable isotopes and isobars. Nevertheless, in some cases, the sensitivity of this technique is limited by the ratio of the radioactive to stable isotopes. In these situations, a 'pre-enrichment' step with an electromagnetic isotope separator can potentially improve the sensitivity of the accelerator technique significantly. We discuss some of the requirements of such a procedure, and describe some experiments that have been carried out at the isotope separator SIDONIE with a view to accelerator detection of cosmogenic 41Ca and 26Al. (orig.)