Nuclear β-decays in plasmas: how to correlate plasma density and temperature to the activity

¹ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare - Laboratori Nazionali del Sud (INFN-LNS), Catania, Italy
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Catania, Catania, Italy
³ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare - Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro (INFN-LNL), Legnaro, Italy
⁴ CNR - Istituto per i Beni Archeologici e Monumentali, Catania, Italy

^* e-mail: eugenia.naselli@lns.infn.it

Published online: 14 January 2020

Abstract

Magnetized plasmas in compact traps may become experimental en-vironments for the investigation of nuclear beta-decays of astrophysical inter-est. In the framework of the project PANDORA (Plasmas for Astrophysics, Nuclear Decays Observation and Radiation for Archaeometry) the research ac-tivities are devoted to demonstrate the feasibility of an experiment aiming atmeasuring lifetimes of radionuclides of astrophysical interest when changing the charge state distribution of the in-plasma ions and the other plasma param- eters such as density and temperature. This contribution describes the multidi-agnostics setup now available at INFN-LNS, which allows unprecedented in-vestigations of magnetoplasmas properties in terms of density, temperature and charge state distribution (CSD). The setup includes an interfero-polarimeter for total plasma density measurement, a multi-X-ray detectors system for X-ray spectroscopy (including time resolved spectroscopy), an X-ray pin-hole camera for high-resolution 2D space resolved spectroscopy, a two-pin plasma-chamber immersed antenna for the detection of plasma radio-self-emission, and differ- ent spectrometers for the plasma-emitted visible light characterization. The setup is also suitable for other studies of astrophysical interest, such as turbulent plasma regimes dominated by the so-called Cyclotron Maser Instability, which is a typical kinetic turbulence occurring in astrophysical objects like magnetized stars, brown dwarfs, etc. A description of recent results about plasma parame- ters characterization in quiescent and turbulent Electron Cyclotron Resonance-heated plasmas will be given.