The REX-ISOLDE project

The Radioactive Beam Experiment REX-ISOLDE [1-3] is a pilot experiment at ISOLDE (CERN) testing the new concept of post acceleration of radioactive ion beams by using charge breeding of the ions in a high charge state ion source and the efficient acceleration of the highly charged ions in a short LINAC using modern ion accelerator structures. In order to prepare the ions for the experiments singly charged radioactive ions from the on-line mass separator ISOLDE will be cooled and bunched in a Penning trap, charge bred in an electron beam ion source (EBIS) and finally accelerated in the LINAC. The LINAC consists of a radiofrequency quadrupole (RFQ) accelerator, which accelerates the ions up to 0.3 MeV/u, an interdigital H-type (IH) structure with a final energy between 1.1 and 1.2 MeV/u and three seven gap resonators, which allow the variation of the final energy. With an energy of the radioactive beams between 0.8 MeV/u and 2.2 MeV/u a wide range of experiments in the field of nuclear spectroscopy, astrophysics and solid state physics will be addressed by REX-ISOLDE.