Accelerator Mass Spectroscopy

AMS requires a particle accelerator, originally used in nuclear physics research, which limits its widespread use due to high costs and technical complexity. Fortunately, UC Davis researchers have access to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (CAMS LLNL), one of over 180 AMS research facilities in the world. AMS is distinct from conventional Mass Spectrometry (MS) because it accelerates ions to extremely high energies (millions of electron volts) compared to the thousands of electron volts in MS (1keV=1.6×10^-16 J). This allows AMS to resolve ambiguities that arise in MS due to atomic and molecular ions of the same mass. AMS is most widely used for isotope studies of ¹⁴C, which has applications in a variety of fields such as radiocarbon dating, climate studies, and biomedical analysis.  Some of the most fascinating applications of AMS range from exposure dating of surface rocks, ¹⁴C labeled drug tracer studies, and even radiocarbon dating of artifacts such as the Shroud of Turin and the Dead Sea Scrolls.