Recent achievements and future prospects at the Louvain-la-Neuve radioactive ion beam facility

Besides 13N, 19Ne beams (T1/2 = 17s) are now routinely available at the Louvain-la-Neuve radioactive ion beam facility. Up to 300 ppA (1.9 109 particles per second) of 19Ne2+ have been accelerated at 1.0 MeV/nucleon and were clearly separated from the isobaric beam of 19F due to the high resolving power of the cyclotron. The paper presents the major R and D efforts in: (1) target development for the production of 6He, 11C and 15O; (2) improvement of the ionization efficiency of the ECR source for charge states higher than 1+; (3) design of a new low energy cyclotron dedicated to the acceleration of radioactive ions and which combines a high transmission efficiency together with a high resolving power