A Radioactive Beam Facility for Today

Richard C. Pardo
Physics Division, Argonne National Laboratory, USA

Since1994 ATLAS has made available radioactive ion beams (RIB) for nuclear physics research.  The radioactive beams developed to date include 8B, 17F, 18F, 21Na, 25Al, 44Ti, 56Co and 56Ni.  During the year 1998 14.7% of the 5749 research beam hours was with radioactive beams.  Both the two-accelerator technique and an in-flight production technique, utilizing inverse kinematics, have been used to produce and deliver these beams.  Typical beam currents for most of these species are in the range of 3X105 to 4X106 ions/s on target.  A number of the techniques developed for heavy-ion AMS experiments at ATLAS have been the basis for our work with radioactive beams.  The technical solutions for providing these beams at ATLAS will be described and prospects for future improvements will be discussed.  Finally, the Argonne porposal to create a national RIB facility, based on ATLAS and superconducting technology, will be described and its status discussed.