Speaker
Description
There is an increasing concern in European citizens about the problems related to the high levels of Particulate matter (PM) in our cities, which affects human health. Aerosol also affects climate change, directly by scattering and absorption of solar radiation and indirectly by impacting on cloud processes. In environmental sciences, Nuclear Physics plays an important role through the measurement of the elemental composition of the aerosol, in particular with PIXE, Particle Induced X-Ray Emission, which is a very sensitive method for detecting trace elements. A better knowledge of the aerosol composition helps to identify its sources. It also brings valuable information for epidemiological studies or to constraint climate models. With PIXE all the elements with Z > 10 are simultaneously detected in a very short measuring time (~ 60 sec respect to several minutes or hours typical of other competitive techniques); furthermore, no sample pre-treatment is necessary: this is especially important when samples with very low mass must be analyzed and therefore any contamination is dramatic (e.g. mineral aerosol in polar ice cores for paleo-climatic studies). However, a proper experimental set-up must be used to exploit all PIXE capabilities.
Theoretical fundamentals, a description of the experimental set-up and some applications will be shown.
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