Fragmentation - experiments for the production of exotic beams

We performed a first experiment using a 403 MeV/u 40Ar beam from the SATURNE accelerator at Saclay, France, and the magnetic spectrometer SPES 1 tuned to work as a momentum-loss achromat. With regard to the limited beam intensity, the separation of the neutron-rich nucleus 36P was chosen as a test case. The setting of the spectrometer as well as the dimensions of the target and the degrader were calculated with the relations described. Several detectors were installed at the intermediate focal plane and behind the spectrometer as diagnostic tools for monitoring the ion-optical properties of the system and for determining the quality of the isotopic separation achieved. In the following the experimental set-up is described in detail. In particular, the experimental information on the characteristics of the energy loss, the energy-loss straggling and the production of cross-contaminants are extracted. An additional tool for increasing the separation quality of the momentum-loss achromat, namely the application of a range telescope, was also tested in this experiment. (orig./HSI)