Investigating the dynamics of Lake Kivu with quantum technology

Lake Kivu, located on the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, is a very peculiar lake in several aspects. The meromictic lake shows a vertical stratification dominated by high salt concentrations of up to 6 ‰ resulting in a very thick monimolimnion of 420 m (max depth ~492 m). This extremely large non mixing part of the lake functions as a reservoir for very high concentrations of volcanogenic gases like methane and carbon dioxide (up to 20 and 100 mmol/l respectively) resulting in a growing hazard for millions of local residents. Our aim of this study is to get insights into the hydrological dynamics, solute transport and the lakes mixing behavior utilizing radiometric dating with ³⁹Ar.

The noble gas isotope ³⁹Ar (t_1/2 = 269 a) covers a unique time span for studying the dynamics of aquatic and glacial systems of the last millennium. Although this tracer has been acknowledged for decades, studies so far are limited by its low abundance, little radioactivity and hence huge required sample sizes (~1000 L water). Until today environmental routine measurements are mainly confined to groundwater reservoirs, where nearly unlimited sampling is possible. The application of techniques from atomic physics using a magneto optical atom trap (MOT) solves the problem by reducing sample volume requirements by several orders of magnitude. The problem of the very low isotopic abundance of 10^-16 is resolved by resonant multi-photon scattering of ³⁹Ar in the MOT. This technique named Argon Trap Trace Analysis with its very low minimal sample size of 0.5 cm³STP pure argon enables easy sample handling in the field as well as common sampling procedures like Niskin bottles for aquatic systems, drill core sampling for glacial systems or as in the case of Lake Kivu spray chamber gas sampling in remote places. It is thus a door opener for new geophysical research fields that were excluded from radio-argon dating so far.

Here we present our most recent results of sampling campaigns in 2018 and 2019 using samples of about 25 – 40 L gas-water mixtures corresponding to 0.5 – 10 cm³STP pure argon showing surprisingly high ages for the lake water.