European Radioactive Beam Facilities  Facilities and Instrumentation: How  Facilities and Instrumentation: How

European Stable-Beam Facilities

For the experimental investigation of the structure of the atomic nucleus, European nuclear physicists presently rely on a network of essentially complementary facilities. These facilities provide high quality beams of ion species of almost all chemical elements with energies around and above the Coulomb barrier. Several accelerators have recently come into operation or were upgraded and offer an extended programme with stable beams:

At Legnaro (Italy), the 16 MV Tandem has been boosted by a superconducting LINAC providing heavy-ions with energies up to 20 MeV/u and masses up to A=100.

The new ``Vivitron''-tandem at Strasbourg (France) presently feeds a broad spectroscopy programme based on up to 20 MV operation. In the longer term, the Vivitron design is aimed at operation with voltages around 25 MV.

The K=130 cyclotron at Jyväskylä (Finland) delivers intense and also rare isotopic beams ranging from protons to heavy-ions (A<100) at energies above the Coulomb barrier.

The superconducting (K=600) AGOR cyclotron built by a joint Dutch-French group at Orsay (France) has been installed at the KVI Groningen (Netherlands), where the experimental programme is based on up to 200 MeV protons and 95 MeV/u heavy-ions, including polarized light ion beams.

Moreover, several regional accelerator facilities are in operation, which are concentrated -- with the exception of the cyclotron in Warsaw (Poland) -- mainly in western Europe. They provide beam time for various smaller scale nuclear structure programmes and the opportunity for extensive technological R&D as well as the basis for the training of students in experimental nuclear physics.

It is strongly recommended to maintain and improve this network of stable beam facilities.