The RIB facility at VECC and the production of new proton-rich nuclei with low energy RI Beams

The ISOL- post accelerator type of RIB facility can be built around different types of mother accelerators. The choice is limited to either a high energy proton machine delivering about tens of microampere beams of about 1 GeV protons, or a high current fixed and low energy proton cyclotron like the K = 30 machine at Louvain-la-Neuve delivering 30 MeV of protons upto a few hundreds of microamperes, or a variable energy cyclotron delivering light-ions like protons, Helium-3, Helium-4 projectiles having energies in the range 20 to about 150 MeV and with beam currents of a few tens of microamperes. Recently a proposal to built an ISOL type RIB facility at VECC has been funded. The choice of the K = 130 cyclotron as the mother accelerator allows, in principle, production of a large number of RI projectiles with reasonably high intensities with relatively easier target radioactivity handling problems. The outline of this facility, the major thrust areas for R and D and their present status and the potential of the RI Beams that are likely to be available from the VEC-RIB facility in terms of offering exciting research possibilities in the fields of nuclear astrophysics and production and study of new proton-rich exotic species will be briefly covered in this paper. (author)