THE FRIB PROJECT - ACCELERATOR CHALLENGES AND PROGRESS*

Abstract

The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, a new national user facility funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science to be constructed and operated by MSU, is currently being designed to provide intense beams of rare isotopes to better understand the nuclear physics, nuclear astrophysics, fundamental interactions, and industrial and medical applications. The FRIB driver linac can accelerate all stable isotopes to energies beyond 200 MeV/u at beam powers up to 400 kW. Key technical R&D programs include low- CW SRF cryomodules and highly efficient charge stripping using a liquid lithium film. Accelerator-physics challenges include acceleration of multiple charge states of beams to meet beam-on-target requirements, efficient production and acceleration of intense heavy-ion beams from low energies, accommodation of multiple charge stripping scenarios and ion species, designs for both baseline in-flight fragmentation and ISOL upgrade options, and design considerations of machine availability, tunability, reliability, maintainability, and upgradability.