The
Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB)
will be a new national user facility for nuclear science, funded
by the Department of Energy Office of Science (DOE-SC) Office
of Nuclear Physics and operated by Michigan State University (MSU).
FRIB will cost approximately $600 million to establish and take
about a decade for MSU to design and build. As a national user
facility, FRIB will provide intense beams of rare isotopes (that
is, short-lived nuclei not normally found on Earth).
Unstable (or rare) isotopes play a critical role
for some of the most compelling open questions in nuclear astrophysics.
Many of these questions JINA has begun to address with the limited
rare isotope production capabilities available today. With FRIB
most of the nuclear physics in stellar explosions becomes finally
accessible to experiments on earth. JINA plays an active role
in shaping the scientific community that will ultimately take
advantage of FRIB by bridging the gap between nuclear physics
and astrophysics, by advancing the science, and by educating the
future leaders of the field.
JINA, in collaboration with other groups, is
also developing new experimental equipment that will initially
be used at existing rare isotope facilities but is intended to
enable FRIB experiments in the future. To that end, an
FRIB astrophysics collaboration was formed within the
framework of the FRIB users organization. The most important piece
of FRIB equipment JINA is involved in is the
Recoil Separator SECAR. Based
on experience with the JINA recoil separator St. George at Notre
Dame, JINA is currently leading the design effort.
