Facility for Rare Isotope Beams
The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams -- FRIB -- will be the next generation rare isotope facility in the United States. With a baseline cost of $730 and a completion date of June 2022, FRIB will provide research opportunities to advance our understanding of rare nuclear isotopes and the evolution of the cosmos for an international community of over 1300 scientists from universities and national laboratories, postdoctoral research associates, and graduate students.
Research programs in nuclear structure, nuclear astrophysics, fundamental symmetries, nuclear science applications, and many more are in the planning stages at FRIB. Information on the Working Groups formed to plan these programs can be accessed in the navigation menu above. To learn even more, please visit our pages on the science of FRIB.
Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing, Michigan, has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy to design and establish FRIB. The planned national user facility will provide research opportunities with a unique combination of fast, stopped, and reaccelerated beams of rare isotopes. More details about the facility can be obtained at the FRIB project website at http://www.frib.msu.edu.
Why is FRIB important?
There are many reasons why FRIB is absolutely essential to nuclear science, and a vibrant U.S. scientific community:
- FRIB will facilitate advances in the structure of nuclei and their cosmic origin, as well as in other compelling basic scientific questions
- FRIB will spark advances in energy, medical diagnostics and therapy, materials science, homeland security, and other areas of applied science
- FRIB will be the the most powerful facility of its kind in the world
- FRIB has a high discovery potential for new isotopes - with 80% coverage of the isotopes predicted to exist up to Uranium
- FRIB capability to produce a wide range of rare isotope beams at energies ranging from thermal to reaccelerated to fast will be unique in the world
FRIB at Michigan State University
FRIB will adjoin the existing National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) facility on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI. FRIB will offer the capability for measurements with fast, stopped and reaccelerated beams of rare isotopes at unprecedented intensities.
As listed on the FRIB project website, features of the proposed facility include:
- Superconducting-RF folded driver linear accelerator that provides 400 kW for all beams with uranium accelerated to 200 MeV/nucleon and lighter ions with increasing energy (protons at 600 MeV/nucleon)
- Two ECR ion sources for redundancy with space to add a third ECR ion source
- Space in the linac tunnel and shielding in the production area to allow upgrading the driver linac energy to 400 MeV/u for uranium and 1 GeV for protons without significant interruption of the future science program
- Space to add multi-user capability
- One in-flight production target
- Space and infrastructure to add up to two ISOL targets or one additional in-flight production target with shielding to accommodate 1 GeV proton beams at 400 kW
- Three stopping stations -- two gas stopping stations and one solid stopper
- A superconducting-RF reaccelerator for reaccelerated beams up to 12 MeV/nucleon (uranium) and higher energies for lighter beams (e.g. 21 MeV/nucleon for 48Cr)
- Experimental areas (47,000 sq ft) for stopped beams, reaccelerated beams, and fast beams
- Upgrade options include doubling the size of the experimental area or adding a neutron scattering facility
- Allowance for experimental equipment