External micro-PIXE measurements: preliminary results on volcanic rocks from Nyiragongo Volcano

The external microbeam facility at the 3 MV Tandetron accelerator of the LABEC Laboratory of INFN in Florence has been used to determine, by PIXE, major, minor and trace element abundances of minerals and groundmass in the lavas from the active Nyiragongo Volcano (Democratic Republic of Congo), which is well known for its lava lake intra-crateric activity [e.g. 1, 2]. During the last eruption of this volcano (January, 2002), two main flows entered the Goma town producing major devastation, forcing the rapid exodus of about 300,000 people and causing the death of 150 persons [3]. After this eruption, the interest of the scientific community on this volcanic area suddenly increased. In this respect, determination of major and trace element abundances in mineral phases and groundmass of lavas may allow to constrain the evolution of magma within the volcanic system from a quantitative view point, thus helping to better understand the way this volcano works. PIXE measurements have been performed in a two-detector setup that makes it possible to simultaneously detect and quantify all elements from Na to the heaviest ones; possible compositional zoning effects in the crystals can also be reliably measured thanks to the good space resolution of the microbeam facility (better than 10 µm) and to the possibility of performing one- and bi-dimensional scans over the areas of interest. Concentration maps of all elements can be obtained, both on-line and a posteriori: the data are collected with a list-mode acquisition system, which allows the distribution of any detected element to be reconstructed after completing the scan.