Darcy is a Dutch/American researcher from the Hague, the Netherlands. She studied Physics at Durham University in the UK, where her research focused on retrospective dosimetry techniques using electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy.
Subsequent to her MPhys, she spent a year as an intern at the International Atomic Energy Agency, working on emergency preparedness and response for nuclear and radiological emergencies at the IAEA’s the Incident and Emergency Centre.
With a passion for experimental physics, she will be working on rL SN MS in Hannover, with applications in trace analysis of actinides in environmental sampling. She looks forward to getting back to the nitty gritty world of laser physics, and applying it to the nuclear field.
Besides Physics, her interests include singing, playing hockey and volleyball, baking bread, and casual diplomacy in the form of meeting people from around the world.
Though multiple element mapping is possible with the present Resonant Laser Secondary Neutral Mass Spectrometer (rL SN MS), the present apparatus suffers from a number of shortcomings. (a) Changing the laser settings from one element to another is a time-consuming process and (b) isobaric / isotopic separation is limited by the rather wide bandwidth of the present laser system. Within LISA, new laser excitation schemes will be developed by combining theoretical modelling (DFT) and high-resolution laser spectroscopy experiments on actinides for applications in trace analysis and radioecology.
Addressing (a) Speeding up the change from on element to another. The candidate will test two-step excitation schemes for Th, U, Np, Pu, Am, Cm (instead of the three step ones used so far). By adding one additional laser (so the system will have four in total), two elements can be resonantly ionized in a fast alteration cycle to save time and considerably lower the influence of instrumental drifts. Alternatively, closely lying excitation wavelengths might be easily accessible by simply tuning the lasers back and forth very fast, for which an additional Ti:Sa laser is required with improved scanning options. Addressing (b) Selective and highly-efficient suppression of isobars. Important examples are detection of 238Pu in a 238U matrix and detection of 241Am in the presence of 241Pu. The 238Pu/U ratio might exceed 1:106, calling for an isobaric suppression of at least 1:108 or better, to be able to measure the 238Pu abundance at sufficient precision. The present setup is not able to suppress 238U over 238Pu by more than a factor of ca. 5000. One of the reasons is a closely lying resonance of U. The candidate will test narrow bandwidth excitation in one or two steps of the excitation ladder of 238Pu for further suppression of unwanted U ionization.
This Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action (MSCA) Innovative Training Networks (ITN) receives funding from the European Union’s H2020 Framework Programme under grant agreement no. 861198