 Schematic of the ISOLDE facility. | |
| ISOLDE experimental setups | |
|---|---|
| COLLAPS | Colinear Laser Spectroscopy |
| CRIS | Collinear Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy |
| EC-SLI | Emission Channeling with Short-Lived Isotopes |
| IDS | ISOLDE Decay Station experiment |
| ISS | ISOLDE Solenoidal Spectrometer |
| ISOLTRAP | ISOLTRAP |
| LUCRECIA | LUCRECIA |
| Miniball | Miniball |
| MIRACLS | Multi Ion Reflection Apparatus for Collinear Spectroscopy |
| SEC | Scattering Chamber Experiments |
| VITO | Versatile Ion Polarisation Technique Online |
| WISArD | Weak Interaction Studies with Radioactive Ion-Beams |
| Other facilities | |
| MEDICIS | Medical Isotopes Collected from ISOLDE |
| 508 | Solid State Physics Laboratory |
The ISOLDE (Isotope Separator On Line DEvice) Radioactive Ion Beam Facility, is an on-line isotope separator facility located at the centre of the CERN accelerator complex on the Franco-Swiss border.[1] Created in 1964, the ISOLDE facility started delivering radioactive ion beams (RIBs) to users in 1967. Originally located at the Synchro-Cyclotron (SC) accelerator (CERN's first ever particle accelerator), the facility has been upgraded several times most notably in 1992 when the whole facility was moved to be connected to CERN's ProtonSynchroton Booster (PSB). ISOLDE is currently the longest-running facility in operation at CERN, with continuous developments of the facility and its experiments keeping ISOLDE at the forefront of science with RIBs. ISOLDE benefits a wide range of physics communities with applications covering nuclear, atomic, molecular and solid-state physics, but also biophysics and astrophysics, as well as high-precision experiments looking for physics beyond the Standard Model. The facility is operated by the ISOLDE Collaboration, comprising CERN and sixteen (mostly) European countries.[2] As of 2019, close to 1,000 experimentalists around the world (including all continents) are coming to ISOLDE to perform typically 50 different experiments per year.[3][4]
Radioactive nuclei are produced at ISOLDE by shooting a high-energy (1.4GeV) beam of protons delivered by CERN's PSB accelerator on a 20 cm thick target. Several target materials are used depending on the desired final isotopes that are requested by the experimentalists. The interaction of the proton beam with the target material produces radioactive species through spallation, fragmentation and fission reactions. They are subsequently extracted from the bulk of the target material through thermal diffusion processes by heating the target to about 2,000 °C.[5]
The cocktail of produced isotopes is ultimately filtered using one of ISOLDE's two magnetic dipole mass separators to yield the desired isobar of interest. The time required for the extraction process to occur is dictated by the nature of the desired isotope and/or that of the target material and places a lower limit on the half-life of isotopes which can be produced by this method, and is typically of the order of a few milliseconds. For an additional separation, the Resonance Ionisation Laser Ion Source (RILIS) uses lasers to ionise a particular element, which separates the radioisotopes by their atomic number.[6] Once extracted, the isotopes are directed either to one of several low-energy nuclear physics experiments or an isotope-harvesting area. A major upgrade of the REX post-accelerator to the HIE-ISOLDE (High Intensity and Energy Upgrade) superconducting linac completed construction in 2018, allowing for the re-acceleration of radioisotopes to higher energies than previously achievable.[7]
- ^ "History". ISOLDE The Radioactive Ion Beam Facility. CERN. Retrieved 8 August 2019.
- ^ "Members of ISOLDE Collaboration | ISOLDE". isolde.cern. Retrieved 2023-07-05.
- ^ Catherall, Richard; Giles, Timothy; Neyens, Gerda (2019). "Exploiting the Potential of ISOLDE at CERN (the EPIC Project)". Proceedings of the 10th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf. IPAC2019. Boland Mark (Ed.), Tanaka Hitoshi (Ed.), Button David (Ed.), Dowd Rohan (Ed.), Schaa, Volker RW (Ed.), Tan Eugene (Ed.): 3 pages, 0.616 MB. doi:10.18429/JACOW-IPAC2019-THPGW053. S2CID 214546194.
- ^ "Active experiments". ISOLDE Web. CERN. Retrieved 10 September 2019.
- ^ Peräjärvi, K.; Bergmann, U. C.; Fedoseyev, V. N.; Joinet, A.; Köster, U.; Lau, C.; Lettry, J.; Ravn, H.; Santana-Leitner, M. (2003-05-01). "Studies of release properties of ISOLDE targets". Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms. 14th International Conference on Electromagnetic Isotope Separators and Techniques Related to their Applications. 204: 272–277. Bibcode:2003NIMPB.204..272P. doi:10.1016/S0168-583X(02)01924-9. ISSN 0168-583X. S2CID 97103894.
- ^ Fedosseev, Valentin; Chrysalidis, Katerina; Goodacre, Thomas Day; Marsh, Bruce; Rothe, Sebastian; Seiffert, Christoph; Wendt, Klaus (2017-08-01). "Ion beam production and study of radioactive isotopes with the laser ion source at ISOLDE". Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics. 44 (8): 084006. Bibcode:2017JPhG...44h4006F. doi:10.1088/1361-6471/aa78e0. ISSN 0954-3899.
- ^ Kadi, Y; Blumenfeld, Y; Delsolaro, W Venturini; Fraser, M A; Huyse, M; Koufidou, A Papageorgiou; Rodriguez, J A; Wenander, F (2017-06-29). "Post-accelerated beams at ISOLDE". Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics. 44 (8): 084003. Bibcode:2017JPhG...44h4003K. doi:10.1088/1361-6471/aa78ca. ISSN 0954-3899. S2CID 125177135.