The Super-FRS will be the most powerful in-flight separator for exotic nuclei up to relativistic energies. Rare isotopes of all elements up to uranium can be produced and spatially separated within some hundred nanoseconds, thus very short-lived nuclei can be studied efficiently. The Super-FRS is a large-acceptance superconducting fragment separator with three branches serving different experimental areas including a new storage-ring complex. The new rare-isotope facility is based on the experience and successful experimental program with the present FRS.
The physics program at the super-conducting fragment separator (Super-FRS) at FAIR, being operated in a multiple-stage, high-resolution spectrometer mode, is discussed. The Super-FRS will produce, separate and transport radioactive beams at high energies up to 1.5 AGeV, and it can be also used as a stand-alone experimental device together with ancillary detectors. Various combinations of the magnetic sections of the Super-FRS can be operated in dispersive, achromatic or dispersion-matched spectrometer ion-optical modes, which allow measurements of momentum distributions of secondary-reaction products with high resolution and precision. A number of unique experiments in atomic, nuclear and hadron physics are suggested with the Super-FRS as a stand-alone device, in particular searches for new isotopes, studies of hypernuclei, delta-resonances in exotic nuclei and spectroscopy of atoms characterized by bound mesons. Rare decay modes like multiple-proton or neutron emission and the nuclear tensor force observed in high-momentum regime can be also addressed. The in-flight radioactivity measurements as well as fusion, transfer and deep-inelastic reaction mechanisms with the slowed-down and energy-bunched fragment beams are proposed for the high-resolution and energy buncher modes at the Super-FRS.
