Oak Ridge Builds Facility for Radioactive Ion Beams

Oak Ridge National Laboratory has recently completed the construction of a radioactive ion beam facility to create nuclei at the limits of stability. The facility is now being commissioned. Created by reconfiguring two existing accelerators that have been used as a heavy‐ion facility, the new Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility is expected to be ready for experiments next summer. Because of the decreasing ratio of protons to neutrons for heavy stable nuclei, says Jerry Garrett, scientific director of the facility, the most efficient technique for producing proton‐rich nuclei for nuclear structure studies involves heavy‐ion induced fusion‐evaporation reactions using proton‐rich projectiles and targets with nearly equal masses. “This new facility should be well suited for such studies of proton‐rich nuclei,” Garrett says.