Physics and Technology for the Next Generation of Radioactive Ion Beam Facilities: EURISOL

Since the discovery of artificial radioactivity in 1935, nuclear scientists have developed tools to study nuclei far from stability. A major breakthrough came in the eighties when the first high energy radioactive beams were produced at Berkeley, leading to the discovery of neutron halos. The field of nuclear structure received a new impetus, and the major accelerator facilities worldwide rivalled in ingenuity to produce more intense, purer and higher resolution rare isotope beams, leading to our much improved knowledge and understanding of the general evolution of nuclear properties throughout the nuclear chart. However, today, further progress is hampered by the weak beam intensities of current installations which correlate with the difficulty to reach the confines of nuclear binding where new phenomena are predicted, and where the r-process path for nuclear synthesis is expected to be located. The advancement of Radioactive Ion Beam (RIB) science calls for the development of so-called next-generation facilities, which will provide beam intensities several (2-4) orders of magnitude higher than presently available, and provide us with many isotopes currently inaccessible. In particular in Europe NuPECC, the European Coordination Committee for Nuclear Physics, recommends building the next generation ISOL installation EURISOL as the highest long term priority for low energy nuclear physics. The physics case and technological solutions for EURISOL were laid out during the EURISOL Design Study, which brought together 20 laboratories representing 14 European countries and was partially funded by the European Commission during the 6th framework program. CERN was a major participant in this study and was recognized as one of the possible sites for the future facility.