The HIE-ISOLDE project aims at several important upgrades of the present ISOLDE radioactive beam facility at CERN. The main focus lies in increasing the energy of the radionuclide beams from 3 MeV/u up to 10 MeV/u through the construction of a superconducting post-accelerator. The upgrade substantially enhances research opportunities in most aspects of nuclear structure and nuclear astrophysics, making ISOLDE the only facility in the world capable of accelerating medium to heavy radioactive isotopes in this energy range.

The HIE-ISOLDE project also includes a design study of improved production targets to accommodate the future increase of proton intensity which will be delivered by the new LINAC4 proton driver. This improvement, combined with the solid state lasers of the RILIS laser ion source and the radiofrequency quadrupole cooler and buncher ISCOOL, will lead to an increase of the radioactive beam intensities of up to an order of magnitude.

Latest News

  • HIE-ISOLDE’s Phase 2 reaches completion
    Tuesday, August 21, 2018
    The HIE-ISOLDE project is on its way to providing radioactive nuclei at higher energies than before.
  • Revamped HIE-ISOLDE serves experiments
    Friday, August 11, 2017
    In July, the second phase of the High-Intensity and Energy upgrade (HIE-ISOLDE) saw its first user experiments get under way using the high-resolution Miniball germanium detector.
  • Ubuntu* - a powerful motto for an important experiment
    Monday, July 24, 2017
    The first African-led experiment has taken place at CERN. Students and staff from the University of the Western Cape (UWC) have investigated the isotope selenium 70 at CERN's Isolde facility.

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