Cosmogenic radionuclides in the Cavezzo meteorite: Gamma-ray measurement and detection efficiency simulationsOPEN ACCESS
Ilaria Bizzarri, Dario Barghini, Paolo Colombetti, Daniele Gardiol, Sara Rubinetti, Salvatore Mancuso, Mario Di Martino, Giovanni Pratesi, Vanni Moggi Cecchi, Nora Groschopf, Andrea Aquino, Matthias Laubenstein, Narendra Bhandari, Carla Taricco
Applied Radiation and Isotopes
Volume 194, April 2023, 110651
“Highlights
- Measurement of cosmogenic radionuclides activity in a freshly-fallen meteorite.
- Coincidence optimization between HPGe and NaI(Tl) detectors and applications.
- HPGe dead layer thickness calculation through measurement of standards.
- Detection efficiency estimation by GEANT4 Monte Carlo simulations.”
“The Cavezzo meteorite was recovered on January 4th, 2020, just three days after the fall observed over Northern Italy by the all-sky cameras of the Italian PRISMA fireball network. Two specimens, weighing 3.1 g (F1) and 52.2 g (F2), were collected in the predicted strewn-field and the meteorite has been classified as an L5 anomalous chondrite. The gamma-activity of the F2 sample was measured at the Monte dei Cappuccini underground Research Station (Torino, Italy) with a large-volume HPGe-NaI(Tl) spectrometer. Thanks to the high efficiency, selectivity, and low background of the spectrometer, we were able to detect fifteen cosmogenic radioisotopes. The presence of nuclides with half-lives down to a few days (47Ca, 52Mn, and 48V) undoubtedly confirmed the recent fall of the sample. The very low activity of 44Ti and 60Co was revealed with a particular coincidence between the HPGe and NaI(Tl) detectors. To obtain the detection efficiency, we have simulated the response of the detector with the GEANT4 toolkit, once the spectrometer’s dead layer thickness was estimated using standards of known activity. Moreover, the simulation of the Dhajala meteorite (H3/4 chondrite) measurement allowed us to verify that the self-absorption of the sample is correctly taken into account and validate our simulations. In this contribution, we focus on the coincidence optimization techniques and the detection efficiency computation.”
