Slow RI-beams from projectile fragment separators

The projectile fragment separator provides a wide variety of short-lived RI-ions with less restrictions on their chemical property or lifetime limit. The beam energy and quality is, however, not adequate for low-energy beam experiments, in particular for trapping experiments. Recently, one has proposed to obtain a low-energy beam from an energetic RI-beam leaving a projectile fragment separator by using a large gas-catcher and an rf ion-guide system. In off-line and in on-line test experiments, the principle of the rf ion-guide was proven. An overall efficiency of 0.2% for 70 MeV/u 8Li from the RIKEN projectile fragment separator (RIPS) was obtained so far