Experience and prospects of stochastic cooling of radioactive beams at GSI

The stochastic cooling system at the experimental storage ring ESR has been used for various experiments with radioactive and stable ions during the past months. Radioactive ions were cooled for the first time. After about 3 s of stochastic cooling and subsequent electron cooling, an extremely well-cooled beam can be observed 6 s after injection. The detectable intensity of this beam is higher than that without stochastic precooling. w proposed Collector Ring (CR) is a dedicated stochastic cooling ring in the new GSI project. Its projected performance is discussed in the light of the new results.