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Name of creator

ISOLDE Collaboration

Administrative history

In the early 1960s European nuclear physicists and nuclear chemists started discussions about the feasibility of a general purpose on-line project for the production of short lived nuclei.

In 1964 an Isotope Separator was designed to put into the Synchro-Cyclotron (SC) accelerator external proton beam in order to study short lived activities. This project was accepted and carried out jointly by the CERN Nuclear Physics Division and visiting teams from many outside universities.

In 1965 the construction of the electromagnetic isotope separator for ISOLDE (Isotope Separator On Line DEtector) started in Aarhus, Denmark.

In 1967 the underground hall at ISOLDE was ready and the first test experiment was performed on 16 October. The experiments were immediately successful and the Collaboration could identify several new istopes of the four elements Krypton, Xenon, Mercury and Radon (ISOLDE-1).

In 1974 ISOLDE-2 was built to handle the SC beam intensity upgrade.

In the late 1980s the ISOLDE Collaboration decided to build a new isotope separator (ISOLDE-3) to make maximum use of the available beam time and to serve the increasing physics community. For lack of place, the ISOLDE-3 was put inside the SC proton hall, which became a new experimental area for ISOLDE.

In 1990 the SC was shut down and ISOLDE moved to the PS Booster, which had unexploited capacity to produce more 1 GeV protons than were needed by other customers. During 1991 the new experimental area was constructed and in Spring 1992 the first beam tests were performed.

In 1995 REX-ISOLDE (Radioactive Beam EXperiment at ISOLDE) was approved by the CERN Research Board. This development was a pilot experiment with energetic radioactive ions at the new ISOLDE. It made full use of the low energetic 1+-beams delivered from the on-line mass separator ISOLDE.

ISOLDE, operated by the ISOLDE Collaboration, was a facility dedicated to the production of a large variety of radioactive ion beams for a great number of different experiments, e.g. in the field of nuclear and atomic physics, solid-state physics, life sciences and material science. In May 1998 ISOLDE acquired the status of a Large Scale Facility within the TMR (Training and Mobility of Researchers) programme of the European Commission.

* Source : CERN-EP-99-040, "Infinitely CERN, Memories from fifty years of research"

Immediate source of acquisition or transfer

Hansen, Peder Gregers of Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University of Aarhus C, Denmark, April 1992 PS-ISOLDE Group, April 1993 Helge Ravn, January 2004.

Item ISOLDE-1-46 was given by Bernard Poulten.