The FAIR Project - a new Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research at GSI

by N. Angert (GSI, Germany)

Thursday 27 May 2004, 14:15 → 15:15 Europe/Zurich

LHC Auditorium (CERN)

A new facility for ion and antiproton research which had been proposed by GSI Darmstadt received the support of the German Ministry for education and Research in February 2003. It shall provide high intensity and high brightness beams for research in nuclear and hadronic structure physics, for investigation of compressed nuclear matter, for atomic and plasma physics. It will consist of a 1100m circumference double ring synchrotron facility (100Tm and 300Tm respectively), based on fast ramped ( 4T/s and 1T/s ) superconducting dipole magnets. The proton and ion beams go either directly to fixed target experiments or to targets for the production of secondary beams of antiprotons or rare isotope beams (RIB). An array of four cooler/accumulator/storage rings will be used to prepare by stochastic and electron cooling high intensity and high quality beams of antiprotons and RIBs for in-ring experiments, for further acceleration or for deceleration, even down to trapping at rest. Experiments in the different research fields can be performed to a large extent in parallel. Some main challenges in accelerator physics and technology are:
- handling of partially stripped high intensity ion beams,
- beam loss control,
- ion beam induced vacuum instabilities,
- fast stochastic and electron cooling of ions and antiprotons,
- fast ramped superconducting synchrotron magnets (4T/s for 2T superferric magnets and 1T/s for 6T cos Θ magnets).