Low- and Medium--Energy Nuclear Physics with Electron-Rare Isotope Collider

Within this long-range program, JINR looks at another Nuclear Physics program, heavily promoted in the world of nuclear physics in the last 3 decades. Beams of rare isotopes far off the line of nuclear stability would be complementing the study of superheavy elements pursued at the JINR Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions (FLNR), and would guarantee JINR staying at the forefront of nuclear physics and providing state-of-the-art research in nuclear physics for the member states of JINR and the international nuclear physics community. The aim of the Rare Isotope Beam (RIB) studies is to provide full knowledge of the nuclear chart from nuclear-stable isotopes to the limits of nuclear structure existence. The information obtained from rare isotope studies is indispensable to resolve fundamental problems of nuclear physics (structure, reactions, origins of the nuclear forces) and nuclear astrophysics (nucleosynthesis, properties of the neutron matter). Encouraged by leading international scientists of the NUSTAR community, JINR has decided to develop and build a powerful RIB facility DERICA (Dubna Electron–Rare Isotope Collider fAcility) covering a broad range of modern nuclear physics aspects (new isotope synthesis and production, determination of its masses, lifetimes and decay modes, studies of nuclear reactions and spectroscopy). The DERICA concept combines in-flight production of RIBs by projectile fragmentation technique (primary beams up to uranium with energy ~ 100 AMeV), stopping RIBs by gas catcher, reacceleration by LINAC-synchrotron combination, and usage of reaccelerated RIBs for reaction studies. The emphasis of the project is storage ring physics with ultimate aim of electron–RIB scattering studies in the collider experiments. Elastic and inelastic electron scattering provides a powerful tool for examining nuclear structure. The most reliable evidence how nuclei actually look comes from electron scattering. However, up to now, the electron scattering studies are limited to stable isotopes. The aim of the DERICA project is to extend this powerful method, which has already provided enormous amount of information about the structure of stable nuclei, to the study of nuclei outside the "valley of stability". DERICA will be a unique and unprecedented tool for nuclear spectroscopy of rare isotopes, i.e., nuclei far from stability. For achieving that goal, the front end of the accelerator complex needs to produce beams of highest intensities. The strong R&D project initiated by JINR was launched several years ago to push the limit of beam intensities to much higher values than available now. Empowered by the superheavy element research "SHE Factory" of FLNR and later by DERICA, JINR will become a worldwide unique facility complementing the top nuclear physics facilities such as FAIR (GSI) in Germany, RIBF (RIKEN) in Japan, FRIB (MSU) in the USA and SPIRAL2 (GANIL) in France.