Low energy cyclotron for radiocarbon dating

The measurement of naturally occurring radioisotopes whose half lives are less than a few hundred million years but more than a few years provides information about the temporal behavior of geologic and climatic processes, the temporal history of meteoritic bodies as well as the production mechanisms of these radioisotopes. A new extremely sensitive technique for measuring these radioisotopes at tandem Van de Graaff and cyclotron facilities has been very successful though the high cost and limited availability have been discouraging. We have built and tested a low energy cyclotron for radiocarbon dating similar in size to a conventional mass spectrometer. These tests clearly show that with the addition of a conventional ion source, the low energy cyclotron can perform the extremely high sensitivity 14C measurements that are now done at accelerator facilities. We found that no significant background is present when the cyclotron is tuned to accelerate 14C negative ions and the transmission efficiency is adequate to perform radiocarbon dating on milligram samples of carbon. The internal ion source used did not produce sufficient current to detect 14C directly at modern concentrations. We show how a conventional carbon negative ion source, located outside the cyclotron magnet, would produce sufficient beam and provide for quick sampling to make radiocarbon dating milligram samples with a modest laboratory instrument feasible