RISOAR: A Facility for Production of Beams of Radioactive Ions

A facility to produce beams of low energy radioactive ions such as 7Be, 11C, 13N, 15O and 19Ne is presently under construction at The Ohio State University. The beams, having expected intensities of order 1×106 ions/s and energies of 8 to 16 MeV, will be directed onto a hydrogen or helium gas cell, where the reaction products from proton or ¿-particle radiative capture reactions, or from particle transfer reactions, will be observed. The results of these reaction studies are of interest to fast nucleosynthesis, the mode of stellar burning which takes place in the hot dense stellar environments surrounding an accreting neutron star, or in the region of a supernovae. The present paper describes the general operation of the facility as well as some of the details associated with specific sections of it. Also discussed is a time scale for completion of the project and initiation of the first experiments on it.