World new facilities for radioactive isotope beams

The use of unstable nuclei in the form of energetic beams for nuclear physics studies is now entering into a new era. 'New-generation' facilities are either in operation, under construction or being planned. They are designed to provide radioactive isotope (RI) beams with very high intensities over a wide range of nuclides. These facilities are expected to provide opportunities to study nuclear structure, astrophysical nuclear processes and nuclear matter with large proton-neutron imbalance in grate detail. This article reports on the current status of such new-generation RI-beam facilities around the world. In order to cover different energy domains and to meet various scientific demands, the designs of RI-beam facilities are of a wide variety. For example, RIBF in Japan, FAIR in Germany and FRIB in US are based on the fragmentation scheme for beams with energies of a few hundred MeV/nucleon to GeV/nucleon, whereas Spiral2 in France, SPES in Italy, HIE-ISOLDE in Switzerland/France, and the future facility EURISOL in Europe are based on the ISOL method, and aim at providing lower-energy RI beams. There are a many other projects including upgrades of existing facilities in the three continents, America, Asia and Europe