Confidence in the precisions of AMS and decay measurements must be comparable for the application of the {sup 14}C calibration to age determinations using both technologies. We confirmed the random nature of the temporal distribution of {sup 14}C ions in an AMS spectrometer for a number of sample counting rates and properties of the sputtering process. The temporal distribution of ion counts was also measured to confirm the applicability of traditional counting statistics.

In recent years exciting experimental discoveries have shown that neutrino flavors oscillate, and hence that neutrinos have nonzero masses and mixings. The Standard Model needs to be modified to accommodate neutrino mass terms, which require either the existence of right-handed neutrinos to create Dirac mass terms, and/or a violation of lepton number conservation to create Majorana mass terms. The observation that neutrino masses and mass-splittings are tiny compared to the masses of any of the other fundamental fermions suggests radically new physics, which perhaps originates at the GUT or Planck Scale, or perhaps indicates the existence of new spatial dimensions. Whatever the origin of the observed neutrino masses and mixings is, it will certainly require a profound extension to our picture of the physical world. The first step towards understanding this new physics is to pin down the measurable parameters, and address the first round of basic questions: (1) Are there only three neutrino flavors, or do light sterile neutrinos exist? Are there any other deviations to three-flavor mixing? (2) There is one angle {theta}{sub 13} in the mixing matrix which is unmeasured. Is it non-zero? (3) We don't know the mass-ordering of the neutrino mass eigenstates. There are two …

An 84.5 eV Ni-like Pd ion 4d - 4p x-ray laser source generated by the LLNL Compact Multipulse Terawatt (COMET) tabletop system has been used to probe the electronic structure of various metals and semiconductors. In addition to the {approx}4 - 5 ps time resolution, the probe provides the necessary high photon flux (>10{sup 12}/pulse), narrow line width ({Delta}E/E{approx}2 x 10{sup -5}) and coherence for studying valence band and shallow core electronic structure levels in a single shot. We show some preliminary results of room temperature and heated thin foil samples consisting of 50 nm Cu coated on a 20 nm C substrate. A 527 nm wavelength 400 fs laser pulse containing 0.1 - 2.5 mJ laser energy is focused in a large 500 x 700 {micro}m{sup 2} (FWHM) spot to create heated conditions of 0.07 - 1.8 x 1012 W cm{sup -2} intensity.

The temporal dependence of the 14.7 nm Ni-like Pd ion x-ray laser is measured as a function of the laser drive conditions with a fast sub-picosecond x-ray streak camera. The chirped pulse amplification laser beam that pumps the inversion process is varied from 0.5 - 27 ps (FWHM) to determine the effect on the x-ray laser pulse duration. The average x-ray laser pulse duration varies by a relatively small factor of 2.5 times from 3.6 ps to 8.1 ps with traveling wave (TW) irradiation conditions. Slightly shorter pulse durations approaching 2 ps are observed with the x-ray laser operating below saturation. The x-ray laser is found to be 4 - 5 times transform-limited for 6 - 13 ps laser pumping conditions.