PIXE AT THE LOUVRE MUSEUM

The Louvre Museum is now the only museum in the world to have its own particle accelerator to be used exclusively for the study and analysis of works of art and archaeology. This accelerator will provide museum scientists at the Laboratoire de Recherche des Musées de France with the capability of using a variety of ion beam techniques, including PIXE, PIGME, NRA, RBS, and AMS. We describe the experimental arrangement of the PIXE system which has recently been set up and present some of our preliminary results on painting pigments and a false Italian Primitive painting. © 1990.