Piero Mandò

Title

Nuclear Techniques for Cultural Heritage

Abstract

While applications of techniques based on Nuclear Physics principles or instrumentation in fields like e.g. Medicine are well known even to the general public, perhaps still less known are those, or at least some of those, to problems in the field of Cultural Heritage. Besides the relatively “popular” radiocarbon dating, which however has even recently seen a new remarkable development both in terms of relevant technical achievements and previously unexploited fields of applications, nuclear techniques for Cultural Heritage also include the non-destructive compositional analysis of works of art, which is of great interest both to historians of art and to restorers. These techniques, and in particular those based on the use of accelerated ion beams to probe the composition of materials, provide a remarkable and still unequalled analytical performance: besides having the prerequisite of non destructivity and non invasiveness, crucial when dealing with works of art, they are multi-elemental, quantitative, very sensitive and fast to perform, and they can provide stratigraphic and very well spatially resolved information. After recalling the general principles on which nuclear techniques applied to Cultural Heritage are based, examples of specific applications performed at LABEC, the dedicated laboratory of INFN Florence, will be presented during the seminar.