December 2, 2011
Made the first experimental apparatus capable of detecting optically the concentration of radiocarbon (14C) present in natural abundance in a sample of carbon dioxide gas. The work, carried out by researchers at the National Institute of Optics of the National Research Council (CNR-INO), at the European Laboratory for Nonlinear Spectroscopy (LENS), will be presented in the journal Physical Review Letters. This research shows the lowest concentration ever measured with laser spectroscopy techniques, a gas of molecules, demonstrating that it is possible to detect carbon dioxide at pressures over a million billion times lower than the atmospheric pressure.