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Register a new userA New Full 3-D Model of Cosmogenic Tritium $^3$H Production in the Atmosphere (CRAC:3H)
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A new model of cosmogenic tritium ($^3$H) production in the atmosphere is presented. The model belongs to the CRAC (Cosmic-Ray Atmospheric Cascade) family and is named as CRAC:3H. It is based on a full Monte-Carlo simulation of the cosmic-ray induced atmospheric cascade using the Geant4 toolkit. The CRAC:3H model is able, for the first time, to compute tritium production at any location and time, for any given energy spectrum of the primary incident cosmic ray particles, explicitly treating, also for the first time, particles heavier than protons. This model provides a useful tool for the use of $^3$H as a tracer of atmospheric and hydrological circulation. A numerical recipe for practical use of the model is appended.
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We present the results of full new calculation of radiocarbon 14C production in the Earth atmosphere, using a numerical Monte-Carlo model. We provide, for the first time, a tabulated 14C yield function for the energy of primary cosmic ray particles ranging from 0.1 to 1000 GeV/nucleon. We have calculated the global production rate of 14C, which is 1.64 and 1.88 atoms/cm2/s for the modern time and for the pre-industrial epoch, respectively. This is close to the values obtained from the carbon cycle reservoir inventory. We argue that earlier models overestimated the global 14C production rate because of outdated spectra of cosmic ray heavier nuclei. The mean contribution of solar energetic particles to the global 14C is calculated as about 0.25% for the modern epoch. Our model provides a new tool to calculate the 14C production in the Earths atmosphere, which can be applied, e.g., to reconstructions of solar activity in the past.
The direct detection of dark matter particles requires ultra-low background conditions at energies below a few tens of keV. Radioactive isotopes are produced via cosmogenic activation in detectors and other materials and those isotopes constitute a background source which has to be under control. In particular, tritium is specially relevant due to its decay properties (very low endpoint energy and long half-life) when induced in the detector medium, and because it can be generated in any material as a spallation product. Quantification of cosmogenic production of tritium is not straightforward, neither experimentally nor by calculations. In this work, a method for the calculation of production rates at sea level has been developed and applied to some of the materials typically used as targets in dark matter detectors (germanium, sodium iodide, argon and neon); it is based on a selected description of tritium production cross sections over the entire energy range of cosmic nucleons. Results have been compared to available data in the literature, either based on other calculations or from measurements. The obtained tritium production rates, ranging from a few tens to a few hundreds of nuclei per kg and per day at sea level, point to a significant contribution to the background in dark matter experiments, requiring the application of specific protocols for target material purification, material storing underground and limiting the time the detector is on surface during the building process in order to minimize the exposure to the most dangerous cosmic ray components.
Future direct searches for low-mass dark matter particles with germanium detectors, such as SuperCDMS SNOLAB, are expected to be limited by backgrounds from radioactive isotopes activated by cosmogenic radiation inside the germanium. There are limited experimental data available to constrain production rates and a large spread of theoretical predictions. We examine the calculation of expected production rates, and analyze data from the second run of the CDMS low ionization threshold experiment (CDMSlite) to estimate the rates for several isotopes. We model the measured CDMSlite spectrum and fit for contributions from tritium and other isotopes. Using the knowledge of the detector history, these results are converted to cosmogenic production rates at sea level. The production rates in atoms/(kg$cdot$day) are 74$pm$9 for $^3$H, 1.5$pm$0.7 for $^{55}$Fe, 17$pm$5 for $^{65}$Zn, and 30$pm$18 for $^{68}$Ge.
Tangential YORP, or TYORP, has recently been demonstrated to be an important factor in the evolution of an asteroids rotation state. It is complementary to normal YORP, or NYORP, which used to be considered previously. While NYORP is produced by non-symmetry in the large-scale geometry of an asteroid, TYORP is due to heat conductivity in stones on the surface of the asteroid. Yet to date TYORP has been studied only in a simplified 1-dimensional model, substituting stones by high long walls. This article for the first time considers TYORP in a realistic 3-dimensional model, also including shadowing and self-illumination effects via ray tracing. TYORP is simulated for spherical stones lying on regolith. The model includes only 5 free parameters, and the dependence of the TYORP on each of them is studied. The TYORP torque appears to be smaller than previous estimates from 1-dimensional model, but still comparable to the NYORP torques. These results can be used to estimate TYORP of different asteroids, and also as a basis for more sophisticated models of TYORP.
The precise location of the water ice condensation front (snow line) in the protosolar nebula has been a debate for a long time. Its importance stems from the expected substantial jump in the abundance of solids beyond the snow line, which is conducive to planet formation, and from the higher stickiness in collisions of ice-coated dust grains, which may help the process of coagulation of dust and the formation of planetesimals. In an optically thin nebula, the location of the snow line is easily calculated to be around 3 AU. However, in its first 5 to 10 million years, the solar nebula was optically thick, implying a smaller snow line radius due to shielding from direct sunlight, but also a larger radius because of viscous heating. Several models have attempted to treat these opposing effects. However, until recently treatments beyond an approximate 1+1D radiative transfer were unfeasible. We revisit the problem with a fully self-consistent 3D treatment in an axisymmetric disk model, including a density-dependent treatment of the dust and ice sublimation. We find that the location of the snow line is very sensitive to the opacities of the dust grains and the mass accretion rate of the disk. We show that previous approximate treatments are quite efficient at determining the location of the snow line if the energy budget is locally dominated by viscous accretion. We derive an analytic estimate of the location of the snow line that compares very well with results from this and previous studies. Using solar abundances of the elements we compute the abundance of dust and ice and find that the expected jump in solid surface density at the snow line is smaller than previously assumed. We further show that in the inner few AU the refractory species are partly evaporated, leading to a significantly smaller solid state surface density in the regions where the rocky planets were formed.
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