Detection of atomic nuclear reaction products via optical imaging.

In this paper we propose a new method for measuring the cross section of low-yield nuclear reactions by capturing the products in a cryogenically frozen noble gas solid. Once embedded in the noble gas solid, which is optically transparent, the product atoms can be selectively identified by laser-induced fluorescence and individually counted via optical imaging to determine the cross section. Single-atom sensitivity by optical imaging is feasible because the surrounding lattice of noble gas atoms facilitates a large wavelength shift between the excitation and the emission spectrum of the product atoms. The tools and techniques from the fields of single-molecule spectroscopy and superresolution imaging in combination with an electromagnetic recoil separator, for beam and isotopic differentiation, allow for a detection scheme with near-unity efficiency, a high degree of selectivity, and single-atom sensitivity. This technique could be used to determine a number of astrophysically important nuclear reaction rates.