Non-Invasive Approach to Investigate the Mineralogy and Production Technology of the Mosaic tesserae from the Roman domus of Villa San Pancrazio (Taormina, Italy)

The archaeological excavations at Villa San Pancrazio (Taormina, Italy) are bringing to light a vast Roman-Imperial residential quarter featuring luxurious dwellings decorated with wall paintings and mosaic floors, pointing it out as one of the most significant archaeological sites of the city. The polychrome and black and white mosaics recovered date back to the middle Imperial period, during the 2nd century AD. This work deals with the first archaeometric investigations of the materials employed for the tesserae production with the aim of elucidating the mineralogical composition and obtaining analytical evidence that can contribute to extracting information related to their production technology. For that purpose, a non-invasive methodology, based on micro energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (μ-EDXRF) spectrometry and Raman spectroscopy, was used to characterize a wide selection of stone, ceramic and glass tesserae. Chemometric tools were exploited to manage the large set of elemental data collected on black and white lithic samples, providing essential clues for the subsequent investigations. The results evidenced the employment of natural lithotypes (calcareous sedimentary, dolomitic and volcanic) local and imported, and also artificial materials, such as ceramic made firing magnesium-rich clays, soda-lime-silica glasses made with different opacifying and coloring agents (such as calcium antimoniate, cobalt and copper).

Radioluminescence Response of Ce-, Cu-, and Gd-Doped Silica Glasses for Dosimetry of Pulsed Electron Beams

Radiation-induced emission of doped sol-gel silica glass samples was investigated under a pulsed 20-MeV electron beam. The studied samples were drawn rods doped with cerium, copper, or gadolinium ions, which were connected to multimode pure-silica core fibers to transport the induced luminescence from the irradiation area to a signal readout system. The luminescence pulses in the samples induced by the electron bunches were studied as a function of deposited dose per electron bunch. All the investigated samples were found to have a linear response in terms of luminescence as a function of electron bunch sizes between 10−5 Gy/bunch and 1.5×10−2 Gy/bunch. The presented results show that these types of doped silica rods can be used for monitoring a pulsed electron beam, as well as to evaluate the dose deposited by the individual electron bunches. The electron accelerator used in the experiment was a medical type used for radiation therapy treatments, and these silica rod samples show high potential for dosimetry in radiotherapy contexts.

Mid-infrared supercontinuum generation in chalcogenide glass fibers: a brief review

Chalcogenide (ChG) glasses have the characteristics of a wide transparency window (over 20 μm) and high optical nonlinearity (up to 103 times greater than that of silica glasses), exhibiting great advantages over silica and other soft glasses in optical property at mid-infrared (MIR) wavelength range. These make them excellent candidates for MIR supercontinuum (SC) generation. Over the past decades, great progress has been made in MIR SC generation based on ChG fibers in terms of spectral extension and output power improvement. In this paper, we introduce briefly the properties of ChG glasses and fibers including transmission, nonlinearity, and dispersion, etc. Recent progress in MIR SC generation based on ChG fibers is reviewed from the perspective of pump schemes. We also present novel ChG fibers such as As-free, Te-based, and chalcohalide fibers, which have been explored and employed as nonlinear fibers to achieve broadband SC generation. Moreover, the potential applications of MIR SC sources based on ChG fibers are discussed.