FLAIR - Facility for Low-energy Antiproton and Ion Research



A new European facility for nuclear and hadron physics, FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research), is being planned at the present GSI in Darmstadt. FAIR will produce intense beams of radioactive ions and antiprotons over a large range of energies, and it will become the primary experimental facility for Swedish nuclear and hadron physics research in the coming decades. Also Swedish accelerator physicists are involved in the development of the FAIR facility, as described on this page, and in addition within the HESR consortium. The Swedish interests in FAIR are gathered under the umbrella of the Swedish FAIR Consortium, SFAIR.

One part of the experimental programme at FAIR will use antiprotons at very low energy. Deceleration of antiprotons to almost zero energy and experiments with these particles will take place in the FLAIR hall at FAIR. These experiments as well as the related accelerator hardware are prepared by the FLAIR collaboration. In addition, the SPARC collaboration will set up experiments in the FLAIR hall using decelerated ions.

 Orange colour shows the layout of present GSI buildings, red colour represents new FAIR buildings and new accelerators and beamlines are in blue. In addition, the FLAIR building, as of June 2006, is shown in colours representing the different uses of different parts of the building.

The deceleration will be made in a series of synchrotron rings, and one of these will need to have an energy range very close to that of CRYRING. Also other requirements of this ring, such as a very good vacuum and efficient beam cooling, are fulfilled by CRYRING. Therefore, it has been decided to move CRYRING to FLAIR, where it will decelerate antiprotons from 30 MeV to 300 keV and ions through the same range of magnetic rigidity. The Manne Siegbahn Laboratory is now preparing for a transfer of CRYRING to FLAIR.

Documentation about FLAIR can be found at the FLAIR homepage, including the FLAIR Technical Proposal that was submitted to GSI in its final version in December 2005. Details about the project of moving CRYRING can be found in this Technical Proposal. Results of machine studies performed at CRYRING in preparation for the use of the ring as an anitproton decelerator can be found in a paper at EPAC06.
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2010-03-18