The HIE-ISOLDE Project

The HIE-ISOLDE project is a major upgrade of the existing ISOLDE radioactive ion-beam facility at CERN. The present energy of 3 MeV/u for post-accelerated radionuclides will be boosted to up to 10 MeV/u which will allow experiments to address all exotic nuclides produced at ISOLDE using, e.g., Coulomb excitation and nucleon transfer reactions. A R and D program on the superconducting linear accelerator is ongoing, including cavity manufacturing with prototype and sputtering tests. Besides the energy upgrade, the beam quality has already been improved and the beam intensity will be increased in the future with the upgrade of the CERN injector chain. An overview of the HIE-ISOLDE project and the present status is given.