Abstract: Unlike beta or alpha emitters, the large energy released in a nuclear decay of an Auger-Meitner (AM) emitter is distributed amongst a high multiplicity of lower energy electrons, most below 500 eV. This makes AM emitters promising candidates for targeted radio-nuclide therapy for the treatment of cancer as the probability for destroying cancerous DNA is significantly increased with higher electron multiplicities and damage to nearby surrounding healthy tissue is mitigated by their low energies.

Despite the high interest in AM emitters, challenges associated with direct study of their properties have limited the role of experimental data in benchmarking dosimetry models. In this talk I will discuss a recent proof-of-concept experiment studying x-ray photo-induced Auger emissions at the Advanced Photon Source using ARM, a new detector for characterizing AM multiplicities and energies. I will also be discussing the prospects and progress of a general, radioisotope cryogenic buffer gas beam source that will be attached to ARM and enable direct study of isolated AM-emitters.

* This work is supported by Argonne LDRD