Jyväskylä University

The JYFL Accelerator Laboratory (JYFL-ACCLAB) is one of the leading stable-ion beam facilities in Europe. As such, it has been operated as one of the Large Research Infrastructures in all EU FP4 through FP7 programmes since 1996, providing a large variety of stable ion beams to about 250 annual foreign users and foreign equipment investments of around 10 million €. Its main research activity is nuclear and accelerator-based physics, forming a Research Centre of Excellence (CoE) of the Academy of Finland from 2000 to 2005 and 2006 to 2011. This status was recently renewed for the years 2012 to 2017.

The focus of the work in the Accelerator Laboratory is on studies of atomic nuclei at the limits of existence. Such nuclei exhibit many new phenomena important for understanding the fundamental interactions between the nuclear constituents, and for answering several outstanding open questions. During the last years, JYFL-ACCLAB has typically operated 45 experiments annually using the main K=130 MeV cyclotron, producing over 6000 hours of beam time per year. A new K=30 MeV cyclotron has recently been commissioned which will allow parallel running of experiments between the main research groups. In order to evaluate the quality of science, an external Programme Advisory Committee meets twice per year following a bi-annual call for proposals.

One of the main research teams utilizes the Ion Guide Isotope Separator On-Line (IGISOL) facility to produce low-energy radioactive ions beams (RIBs) of proton- and neutron-rich isotopes of all elements. State-of-the-art ion manipulation techniques, including ion traps and laser manipulation, as well as decay spectroscopy stations, have resulted in an impressive range of nuclear structure topics studied over many years. One of the key technologies is the use of high resolution collinear laser spectroscopy to study fundamental properties of both ground- and isomeric states of exotic nuclei, namely nuclear spins, moments and changes in mean-square charge radii. This is complemented by a suite of powerful tunable pulsed lasers for selective production of RIBs or for efficient resonance ionization spectroscopy inside the ion source.

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Jyväskylä University
IGISOL facility