Status of the R&D for the rare isotope accelerator project

A next generation radioactive beam facility, the Rare Isotope Accelerator (RIA), is in preparation in the US. RIA aims at producing intense beams of radioactive isotopes and providing them to experimental stations with energy variable from ion source energy to a few hundred MeV/u. To perform this task, RIA will use standard ISOL and fragmentation techniques together with novel approaches combining advantages of both techniques to obtain high quality beams of the produced isotopes at all energy regimes. RIA will use these approaches in combination with a novel 400 kW superconducting heavy- ion driver linac to produce the activity and a very efficient post- acceleration scheme based on low-frequency RFQs injecting an ATLAS- like superconducting linac to obtain maximum intensity and excellent beam quality at the experimental stations. The development of the RIA concept required new ideas and significant technical advances. The technical issues with this versatile high-power facility and their present solutions will be presented together with the present status of the R&D efforts and the performance obtained with various prototypes that have been completed. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. 25 Refs.