Research

The Measurement and Analysis of Rn-222 in the Environment

 

Radon-222 is one of the decay daughter in the uranium decay series. Chemically, radon is a colorless, odorless, tasteless noble gas. However, Rn-222 is radioactive, with a half life of 3.82 days. It emits energetic alpha particles and transforms into a series radioactive nuclides. As being produced from the soil, rocks and water in nature, Rn-222 is considered as a hazard to human health if the local concentration is too high. Actually, investigation reviews that about 54% of the background radioactivity in USA comes from the Rn-222 gas.

 

We are planning to measure Rn-222 in natural water. Investigations like  measuring Rn-222 in the water samples from different geological locations, or observing the Rn-222 concentration varying as a function of time in a long period of time (years) are in discussion. This research will be useful for the understanding of the Rn production mechanism as well as for the evaluation of the quality of the local environment.

 

 

 

The Synthesis of the Indium-loaded Organic Liquid Scintillator for Solar Neutrino Detection

 

The investigations on solar neutrinos with the gigantic underground detectors have been a big hit in the scientific community recently. The results from these investigations are rewriting our knowledge about the elementary particles, and are opening new windows to the scientific fields including particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology.

 

This study is to synthesize an indium-loaded organic liquid scintillator (InLS) that is to be used for the detection of low energy solar neutrinos. Although most of the neutrinos emitted from the Sun are produced by the proton-proton reactions and have low energy (< 1 MeV), experimentally conducting a real-time measurement on these solar neutrinos has been proved extremely difficult. However, if successful, the results will be greatly significant to the understanding of the mechanism of the Sun’s burning and the neutrino oscillation. Up to date, the best project to measure low-energy solar neutrino is LENS (Low-Energy Neutrino Spectrum) project. One of the key points for the success of LENS project is to synthesize over 100 tons of qualified InLS as the target material of the LENS detector. We have found a new recipe for the synthesis of InLS. The InLS samples obtained with this recipe meet the stringent conditions required by LENS. Presently, we are at the stage of optimizing the recipe and searching the conditions for prototype scale (liters) synthesis.