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The Selective Production of Exotic Species project is under construction at Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro-INFN. The aim of the collaboration is to produce highly pure Radioactive Ion Beams (RIBs) from fission fragments of a uranium carbide (UC x) target activated by a cyclotron proton beam. In order to select a specific atomic species, the main tool to be applied is the resonant laser ionization technique. We have just completed the installation of a dedicated all solid state laser system whose elements are tunable to transitions of all the elements/isotopes of interest for the project. The new laser system is based on three Titanium:sapphire laser sources, independently pumped by three Nd:YLF pump lasers, and it can be coupled to two high harmonic generation (second harmonic generation, third harmonic generation, and fourth harmonic generation) setups. The power, wavelength, and position of the laser beams are continuously monitored and stabilized by using automated active systems to improve the beam production stability of RIBs. This paper presents the main features of the laser system and examples of application of a laser ion source, including a first demonstration of photoionization of stable silver, one of the most requested elements for RIB application.

The LARAMED project, acronym for LAboratory of RAdioisotopes for MEDicine, is the new research infrastructure being established at the Legnaro National Laboratories (LNL), focused on the production of novel medical radionuclides, actually unavailable for the scientific community. This work presents the recent advancements of the LARAMED laboratories and bunkers in the SPES facility, where the 70-MeV high current proton cyclotron was installed in 2015 to perform not only fundamental nuclear physics studies but also research activities related to medical applications. The latest research outcomes on the production of the theranostic 67Cu and 47Sc radionuclides, obtained thanks to the Italian and international LARAMED network, are also summarized.

At Legnaro National Laboratories of INFN is under construction a Rare Isotope Facility called "Selective Production of Exotic Species" (SPES) based on a 35-70 MeV proton cyclotron, able to deliver two beams with a total current up to 0.75 mA, an ISOL fission target station and an existing ALPI superconducting accelerator as a post accelerator (up to 10 MeV/u for A/q=7). The paper will cover notably: the high-resolution mass separator, the CW RFQ (80 MHz, 727 keV/u, with internal bunching), the 1+ low energy transfer line and the injection line from Charge Breeder to ALPI under installation., Proceedings of the 14th Int. Conf. on Heavy Ion Accelerator Technology, HIAT2018, Lanzhou, China

The widespread availability of novel radioactive isotopes showing nuclear characteristics suitable for diagnostic and therapeutic applications in nuclear medicine (NM) has experienced a great development in the last years, particularly as a result of key advancements of cyclotron-based radioisotope production technologies. At Legnaro National Laboratories of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (LNL-INFN), Italy, a 70-MeV high current cyclotron has been recently installed. This cyclotron will be dedicated not only to pursuing fundamental nuclear physics studies, but also to research related to other scientific fields with an emphasis on medical applications. LARAMED project was established a few years ago at LNL-INFN as a new research line aimed at exploiting the scientific power of nuclear physics for developing innovative applications to medicine. The goal of this program is to elect LNL as a worldwide recognized hub for the development of production methods of novel medical radionuclides, still unavailable for the scientific and clinical community. Although the research facility is yet to become fully operative, the LARAMED team has already started working on the cyclotron production of conventional medical radionuclides, such as Tc-99m, and on emerging radionuclides of high potential medical interest, such as Cu-67, Sc-47, and Mn-52.

INFN-LNL is constructing an ISOL (Isotope Separation On Line) facility delivering neutron rich ion beams at 10 A MeV or beyond, making use of the linear accelerator ALPI as the secondary accelerator. The facility includes a direct ISOL target based on UC x and able to reach 10 13 fissions/s. In parallel, an applied physics facility will be developed, with applications in medicine and neutron production. The SPES project is a national facility, approved and funded. Commissioning with the first exotic species is expected in 2019. The primary accelerator is a commercial cyclotron, which will send a 40 MeV, 200 μA proton beam onto an UC x target, connected to SIS, PIS and LIS ion sources. The extracted beam is purified through a Low Resolution Mass Separator (LMRS, i.e. a Wien filter and a dispersive dipole), a beam cooler and a High Resolution Mass Separator (HRMS) and sent to an ECR charge breeder to boost the exotic beam charge state. The highly charged exotic beam is further separated in a MRMS (Medium Resolution Mass Separator) and injected into a 100% duty cycle RFQ and into the existing superconducting linac ALPI, which will be refurbished and upgraded to be an efficient exotic beam accelerator. The upgrade of ALPI will give ∼10 A MeV energy to 132 Sn 19+ , taken as the reference ion beam. The paper presents the status of the design and construction of the SPES facility.

SPES, a new accelerator facility for both the production of exotic ion beams and radio-pharmaceuticals, is presently being installed at the Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro in Italy (LNL). The new cyclotron, which will provide high intensity proton beams for the production of the rare isotopes, has been installed and is now in the commissioning phase. We present here the status of the part of the project devoted to the production and acceleration of fission fragments created in the interaction of an intense proton beam on a production target of UCx. The expected SPES radioactive beams intensities, their quality and their maximum energies (up to 11 MeV/A for A=130) will permit to perform forefront research in nuclear structure and nuclear dynamics far from the stability valley. Another low energy section of the facility is foreseen for new and challenging research, both in the nuclear physics and in the material science frameworks.

A new Radioactive Ion Beam (RIB) facility (SPES) is presently under construction at the Legnaro National Laboratories of INFN. The SPES facility is based on the ISOL method using an UCx Direct Target able to sustain a power of 10 kW. The primary proton beam is provided by a high current Cyclotron accelerator with energy of 40 MeV and a beam current of 0.2-0.5 mA. Neutron-rich radioactive ions are produced by proton induced fission at an expected fission rate of the order of 1013 fissions per second. After ionization and selection the exotic isotopes are re-accelerated by the ALPI superconducting LINAC at energies of 10A MeV for masses in the region A=130 amu. The expected secondary beam rates are of the order of 107 – 109 pps. Aim of the SPES facility is to deliver high intensity radioactive ion beams of neutron rich nuclei for nuclear physics research as well as to be an interdisciplinary research center for radio-isotopes production for medicine and for neutron beams.

Facilities making use of the Isotope Separator On-Line (ISOL) method for the production of Radioactive Ion Beams (RIB) attract interest because they can be used for nuclear structure and reaction studies, astrophysics research and interdisciplinary applications. The ISOL technique is based on the fast release of the nuclear reaction products from the chosen target material together with their ionization into short-lived nuclei beams. Within this context, the SPES (Selective Production of Exotic Species) facility is now under construction in Italy at INFN-LNL (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare — Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro). The SPES facility will produce RIBs mainly from n-rich isotopes obtained by a 40 MeV cyclotron proton beam (200 μA) directly impinging on a uranium carbide multi-foil fission target. The aim of this work is to describe and update, from a comprehensive point of view, the most important results obtained by the analysis of the on-line behavior of the SPES production target assembly. In particular an improved target configuration has been studied by comparing different codes and physics models: the thermal analyses and the isotope production are re-evaluated. Then some consequent radioprotection aspects, which are essential for the installation and operation of the facility, are presented. © 2015, SIF, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

The SPES Radioactive Ion Beam facility at INFN-LNL is presently in the construction phase. The facility is based on the Isol (Isotope separation on-line) method with an UCx Direct Target able to sustain a power of 10 kW. The primary proton beam is provided by a high current Cyclotron accelerator with energy of 35-70 MeV and a beam current of 0.2-0.5 mA. Neutron-rich radioactive ions are produced by proton induced Uranium fission at an expected fission rate of the order of 1013 fissions per second. After ionization and selection the exotic isotopes are re-accelerated by the ALPI superconducting Linac at energies of 10A MeV for masses in the region A = 130 amu. The expected secondary beam rates are of the order of 107 - 109 pps. Aim of the SPES project is to provide a facility for high intensity radioactive ion beams for nuclear physics research as well as to develop an interdisciplinary research center based on the cyclotron proton beam.

A new Radioactive Ion Beam (RIB) facility (SPES) is presently under construction at the Legnaro National Laboratories of INFN. The SPES facility is based on the ISOL method using an UCx Direct Target able to sustain a power of 10 kW. The primary proton beam is provided by a high current Cyclotron accelerator with energy of 35-70 MeV and a beam current of 0.2-0.5 mA. Neutron-rich radioactive ions are produced by proton induced fission on an Uranium target at an expected fission rate of the order of 1013 fissions per second. After ionization and selection the exotic isotopes are re-accelerated by the ALPI superconducting LINAC at energies of 10A MeV for masses in the region A=130 amu. The expected secondary beam rates are of the order of 107 – 109 pps. Aim of the SPES facility is to deliver high intensity radioactive ion beams of neutron rich nuclei for nuclear physics research as well as to be an interdisciplinary research centre for radio-isotopes production for medicine and for neutron beams.

An intense research and development activity to finalize the design of the target ion source system for the selective production of exotic species (SPES) facility (operating according to the isotope separation on line technique) is at present ongoing at Legnaro National Laboratories. In particular, the characterization of ion sources in terms of ionization efficiency and transversal emittance is currently in progress, and a preliminary set of data is already available. In this work, the off-line ionization efficiency and emittance measurements for the SPES forced electron beam induced arc discharge ion source in the case of a stable Ar beam are presented in detail.

The SPES Radioactive Ion Beam (RIB) facility at INFN-LNL is in the construction phase. It is based on the ISOL method with an UCx Direct Target able to sustain a power of 10 kW. The primary proton beam is delivered by a high current Cyclotron accelerator, with energy 35-70 MeV and a beam current of 0.2-0.5 mA. Neutron-rich radioactive ions will be produced by proton induced Uranium fission in the UCx target at an expected fission rate in the order of 10 13 fissions per second. The exotic isotopes will be re-accelerated by the ALPI superconducting LINAC at energies of 10A MeV and higher, for masses in the region A=130 amu at expected rate on the secondary target of 10 7 - 10 9 pps. The SPES project has the aim to provide high intensity and high- quality beams of neutron-rich nuclei as well as to develop an interdisciplinary research center based on the cyclotron proton beam.

The SPES Radioactive Ion Beam facility at INFN-LNL is presently in the construction phase. The facility is based on the Isol (Isotope separation on-line) method with an UCx Direct Target able to sustain a power of 10 kW. The primary proton beam is provided by a high current Cyclotron accelerator with energy of 35-70 MeV and a beam current of 0.20.5 mA. Neutron-rich radioactive ions are produced by proton induced Uranium fission at an expected fission rate of the order of 1013 fissions per second. After ionization and selection the exotic isotopes are re-accelerated by the ALPI superconducting Linac at energies of 10A MeV for masses in the region A = 130 amu. The expected secondary beam rates are of the order of 107 ? 109 pps. Aim of the SPES project is to provide a facility for high intensity radioactive ion beams for nuclear physics research as well as to develop an interdisciplinary research center based on the cyclotron proton beam.

SPES (Selective Production of Exotic Species) is an Isotope Separation On-Line (ISOL) based accelerator facility that will be built in the Legnaro-Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) Laboratory (Italy), intended to provide intense neutron-rich radioactive ion beams obtained by proton-induced fission of a uranium carbide (UCx) target. Besides this main target material, silicon carbide (SiC) will be the first to be used to deliver p-rich beams. This target will also validate the functionality of the SPES facility with aluminum beam as result of impinging SiC target with proton beam. In the past, off line studies on laser photoionization of aluminum have been performed in Pavia Spectroscopy Laboratory and in Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro; a XeCl excimer laser was installed in order to test the laser ionization in the SPES hot cavity. With the new Wien filter installed a better characterization of the ionization process in terms of efficiency was performed and results are discussed.

Using high power laser focalized into a target material generates plasma and it has the consequence to immediately extract and ionize atoms from the target itself. This process is the starting point to have a simple and compact ion source, usually named Laser Ion Source (LIS). This kind of sources are arising in the scenario of ion sources especially in refractory elements ions production, where the atomization of the material to ionize is the main issue because of its high evaporating temperature. These considerations and the fact that ion sources are becoming nowadays more and more important to several fields of science and technology, open an interesting line of research that our group at Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro wants to investigate. Experiment involves characterization of produced ions by measuring charge state and amount of ions created. Measurements will be performed with several power densities and varying ions collector distance and potential respect to the target. These simple experiments are the necessary preliminary steps to characterize the system and to start a solid future development onto possible different and effective ways to perform ions sources using laser.

A new Radioactive Ion Beam (RIB) facility (SPES) is presently under construction at the Legnaro National Laboratories of INFN. The SPES facility is based on the ISOL method using an UCx Direct Target able to sustain a power of 8 kW. The primary proton beam is provided by a high current Cyclotron accelerator with energy of 35-70 MeV and a beam current of 0.2-0.7 mA. Neutron-rich radioactive ions are produced by proton induced fission on an Uranium target at an expected fission rate of the order of 1013 fissions per second. After ionization and selection the exotic isotopes are re-accelerated by the ALPI superconducting LINAC at energies of 10A MeV for masses in the region A=130 amu. The expected secondary beam rates are of the order of 107 - 109 pps. Aim of the SPES facility is to deliver high intensity radioactive ion beams of neutron rich nuclei for nuclear physics research as well as to be an interdisciplinary research centre for radio-isotopes production for medicine and for neutron beams.