Radioactive ion beam production at GANIL: Status and prospectives (invited) (abstract)

During the last ICIS in Oakland, we announced that the production of radioactive ion beams on the SPIRAL facility located at GANIL will start before the end of 2001. The production has effectively started and numerous multicharged radioactive ion beams have been delivered for high energy nuclear experiments. This article makes an overview of the different beams that have been produced. In the mean time, an important Research and Development program is continued in order to produce new species of radioactive elements. A new concept of multicharged radioactive production that couple a monocharged ion source, based on the monolithe concept, to an electron cyclotron resonance ion source like Nanogan3 is under developments and is described. The development of monocharged ion sources with high efficiencies is also motivated by a new big project that is under studies at GANIL: the SPIRAL 2 project. The goal of this project consists of extending the disponible radioactive ion beams to very heavy elements created with a new method of production: while the SPIRAL 1 facility uses the projectile fragmentation for radioactive nuclei production, the SPIRAL 2 project is based on the fission of a uranium carbide target induced by a neutron flow created by a high intensity deuteron beam. The principle and an overview of the project is presented