In-situ production of radionuclides at great depths

Determination of muon attenuation lengths in depth profiles from in situ produced cosmogenic nuclides

“…Despite agreeing with Heisinger et al [11][12][13][14] for slow muons contribution for 26 Al, this study reveals large discrepancies for slow muons regarding 10 Be and for fast muons contributions regarding both 10 Be and 26 Al. Simply oppose laboratory experiments conducted by Heisinger et al [11][12][13][14] at concentrations of cosmogenic nuclides measured in natural samples collected along depth profiles is not completely satisfactory to explain the differences in the contributions of muons. In this paper, a solution to reconcile both approaches will be proposed by reviewing most of the depth profiles already published in the literature.…”

“…3 on the measured concentrations then permit the determination of the mean attenuation length that not only takes into account the entire energy spectrum of the muon particles depending on their specific initial incidence angles, but also that integrates all the nuclear interactions with the chemical elements encountered along the various pathways. This chemical composition influence has already been considered in previous studies [28,11] but only mean values are available for few minerals [29].…”

“…All these numbers have been deduced from experimental data from natural rock samples. However, there is currently a growing body of theoretical literature examining production of cosmogenic nuclides induced by muons [9][10][11][12][13][14]. It has been observed that muon contributions proposed by Heisinger et al [11][12][13][14] might have been overestimated [8,15,16] because physical experiments that yield to these numbers have been conducted at two discrete energies that may not be representative of the natural muon spectrum energy range.…”

Cosmogenic Be-10 and the Solid Earth: Studies in Geomagnetism, Subduction Zone Processes, and Active Tectonics

“…Currently the community tends to ignore the possibility of a small deviation from a simple exponential for fast neutron attenuation due to boundary effects at the atmosphere-rock surface. Recent work by Heisinger et al (1997) and J. Stone (Stone 1999(Stone , 2000Gosse and Stone 2001) has shown that only about 2.2% of 10 Be production (on a rock surface at sea level) is produced through muon capture.…”

Quantifying soil loss with in-situ cosmogenic 10Be and 14C depth-profiles

“…Different cosmogenic nuclides have different production pathways, and the production rates for these different production pathways attenuate differently with depth (Strack et al, 1994;Brown et al, 1995;Heisinger et al, 1997Heisinger et al, , 2002a. Thus, at least in theory, the depth-profiles of cosmogenic nuclides can provide more information on the processes that operate at the Earth's surface than a single nuclide concentration obtained from a surface sample (cf.…”