HIE-ISOLDE, the project and the physics opportunities

The ISOLDE facility at CERN offers the largest selection of ISOL beams today. The overall aim of the HIE-ISOLDE project is to enlarge the physics domains achievable with these beams, in particular by raising the maximum energy of post-accelerated beams to more than 10MeV/u. An outline of the history of the project is followed by a succinct description of the superconducting linac chosen for acceleration and an overview of the parts of the project aiming to the improvement of the beam quality and intensity. Concrete examples are given of experiments that will be performed at HIE-ISOLDE.