9:15 AM - 9:30 AM
[MTT28-02] Determination of absolute 3He/4He ratio of He Standard of Japan
Keywords:Isotope ratio analysis, 3He/4He ratio, Mass spectrometry, Big bang nucleosynthesis, Neutron beta decay
As long as 3He/4He ratio is used to compare relative contributions of primordial and radiogenic in each geochemical reservoir, absolute 3He/4He value of atmospheric helium or HESJ is less important. However, it is a critical issue in some applications of helium isotopes, such as tritium-3He dating and an experimental project to measure the neutron lifetime with total uncertainty of 1 sec (0.1%) using pulsed neutron source at J-PARC [4].
A neutron decays into a proton, an electron, and an anti-neutrino with a lifetime of 880.3 ± 1.1 sec [5]. The lifetime is an important constant in the Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) that controls amounts of primordial elements in our universe. In this experiment, the incident neutron flux is measured by counting 3He(n,p)3H reaction in a time projection chamber detector filled with 3He, 4He and CO2. To determine neutron lifetime with uncertainty less than 0.1%, 3He number density in the detector must be accurately known with even smaller uncertainty. As a part of this experiment, we are developing a gas handling system to control 3He number density with uncertainty of 0.1%. The 3He gas is mixed with research grade He in a vessel with measuring pressures of these gases precisely using a calibrated piezoresistive transducer.
We fabricated control samples of known 3He/4He ratio using the gas handling system and measured the ratio using a sector type single focusing noble gas mass spectrometer with double collector system [6] at Dept. of Basic Sci., the Univ. of Tokyo by referring to HESJ. The results will contribute to determine the absolute 3He/4He value of HESJ, and that of atmospheric helium also [6].
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