Artist's view of Ganil (credit: Ganil, CEA/CNRS) with the Spiral2 project facilities on the left.
On 9 June 2023, Sylvie Retailleau, Minister for Higher Education and Research, and Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Minister for Energy Transition, visited the GANIL facilities. On this occasion, Sylvie Retailleau announced €40 million for GANIL's projects funding, in particular the renovation of the cyclotrons (CYREN project) and the DESIR project, thanks to an investment made possible by the Research Programming Act. The NEWGAIN project will also benefit from this funding.
This is a strong signal of confidence and support at the highest level for GANIL's activities. This funding will make possible the finalization of the first phase of the SPIRAL2 project, which had benefited from three Equipex projects under the various Plans d'Investissements d'Avenir (S3, DESIR, NEWGAIN). It also provides a long-term perspective for GANIL's historicalfacility. GANIL attracts a research community of more than a thousand users, the majority of them international.
Renovation of the cyclotrons
GANIL's separate sector cyclotrons (CSS), which came into operation 40 years ago, continue to produce top-level scientific output in a number of areas, but their breakdown rate has increased significantly in recent years, reducing the time available for experiments and putting great pressure on the technical teams to carry out repairs. The renovation of the cyclotrons planned as part of the CYREN project will allow to consolidate GANIL's scientific output, not only from nuclear physics experiments but also from experiments performed by the swiftion physics and radiobiology communities, which depend exclusively on the cyclotrons and account for around a third of users. It is also essential for DESIR'sscientific programme, a large part of which requires beams from SPIRAL1, a facility dedicated to the production of exotic beams, based on the CSS beams from GANIL. Lastly, it is essential for many space industry companies who use cyclotron beams to test electronic components.
On 9 June 2023, Ministers Sylvie Retailleau and Agnès Pannier-Runacher, here in the Spiral2 linear accelerator room, guided by Patricia Chomaz, Director of GANIL, toured the new Spiral2 project facilities. ©DRAKODRONE - Olivier Naves
DESIR, a unique research platform
The DESIR project will provide GANIL with a new experimental platform dedicated to fundamental research and to various applications using very low energy exotic ion beams produced with SPIRAL1 and SPIRAL2. DESIR is opening up new prospects for GANIL and should eventually account for a significant proportion of its scientific output in various areas of nuclear physics, fundamental interaction physics and nuclear astrophysics. Its scientific programme is based on two key elements that make the DESIR facility a unique and highly competitive research platform on an international scale: firstly, the complementary nature of the studies that can be carried out using a variety of measurement techniques (laser spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, decay measurements and various measurements using ion traps); secondly, the very high optical quality and purity of the ion beams analysed by the DESIR separation tools ensemble.
A new injector for SPIRAL2's LINAC
The NEWGAIN (New Ganil Injector) project aims at building a new injector that will be connected to Spiral2's superconducting linear accelerator. The goal is to produce very intense heavy ion beams up to uranium, far beyond the performance of the existing injector. With the addition of this new injector, SPIRAL2's LINAC will deliver, in its energy range, the most intense beams in the world on a wide variety of ions (from protons to uranium), which will lead to a very high discovery potential, thanks in particular to the S3 Super Spectrometer Separator.
Contacts : Patricia Chomaz
• GANIL
