The Auger Radioisotope Microscope: an instrument for characterization of Auger electron multiplicities and energy distributions

• الحاوية / القاعدة: New Journal of Physics
• المؤلفون الرئيسيون: Patrick R Stollenwerk, Stephen H Southworth, Francesco Granato, Amy Renne, Brahim Mustapha, Kevin G Bailey, Peter Mueller, Jerry Nolen, Thomas P O’Connor, Junqi Xie, Linda Young, Matthew R Dietrich
• التنسيق: مقال
• اللغة: الإنجليزية
• منشور في: IOP Publishing 2025-01-01
• الموضوعات: Auger spectroscopy; nuclear medicine; Auger emitters; Auger multiplicity; radioactive cryogenic buffer gas beam source
• الوصول للمادة أونلاين: https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/add6cd

We describe a new instrument, the Argonne Auger Radioisotope Microscope (ARM), capable of characterizing the Auger electron (AE) emission of radionuclides, including candidates relevant in nuclear medicine. Our approach relies on event-by-event ion–electron coincidence, time-of-flight, and spatial readout measurement to determine correlated electron multiplicity and energy distributions of Auger decays. We present a proof-of-principle measurement with the ARM using x-ray photoionization of stable krypton beyond the K -edge and identify a bifurcation in the electron multiplicity distribution depending on the emission of K-LX electrons. Extension of the ARM to the characterization of radioactive sources of AE emissions is enabled by the combination of two recent developments: (1) cryogenic buffer gas beam technology to introduce Auger emitters into the detection region with well-defined initial conditions, and (2) large-area micro-channel plate detectors with multi-hit detection capabilities to simultaneously detect multiple electrons emitted in a single decay.