Introduction of the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou (HIRFL)

Abstract

The Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou (HIRFL) is a multi-disciplinary research facility that provides heavy ion beams for physical, biomedical and material sciences. It is a major academic facility of China and one of the world's important centers in nuclear physics and accelerators. The facility was built step by step at Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) over a half century. The first cyclotron was built with great assistance from the former Soviet Union in 1960s, and the newest linear accelerator was tested successfully in 2019. The HIRFL accelerator can provide beams from proton to Uranium with energies of hundreds MeV/u, and hence diverse fundamental sciences and applied researches were carried out at IMP. In this paper, an introduction of the HIRFL accelerator complex was presented. Details of the HIRFL components including ion sources, cyclotrons, synchrotrons, linac and experimental terminals were described. The current operation status and upgrade plans were reported.