A report on the Naval Research Laboratory AMS facility

A large portion of the novel trace element AMS (TEAMS) facility at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is now installed. Vacuum and beam optics hardware is in place, and testing has begun with a single-cathode ion source in place of our commercial secondary ion mass spectrometer source. This more intense source simplifies diagnostic testing and our initial research efforts. We have received a portion of our 12 position-sensitive-detector modules for the focal plane of the spectrograph, and their testing has begun. For our initial research, post-acceleration stripping was explored as a means to remove the interfering S-32 isobar in Si-32 measurements, and measurements were performed on a test bench to evaluate the feasibility of neutral beam injection for species like Ar which cannot form negative ions. Programmatically, NRL is actively involved in the study of gas hydrates present under the ocean floor, which includes plans to analyze cycling between various carbon pools present there. Since C-14 analysis is an important part of this work, a graphitization facility to process various sources of carbonaceous material has been constructed. In addition, the TEAMS design will be modified to include a multi-cathode ion source and a switching electrostatic analyzer (ESA) to choose between the two different ion sources. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.