ISOLDE

The ISOLDE (Isotope Separator On Line DEvice) Radioactive Ion Beam Facility, is an on-line isotope separator facility located at the centre of the CERN accelerator complex on the Franco-Swiss border. Created in 1964, the ISOLDE facility started delivering radioactive ion beams (RIBs) to users in 1967. Originally located at the synchro-cyclotron (SC) accelerator (CERN's first ever particle accelerator), the facility has been upgraded several times most notably in 1992 when the whole facility was moved to be connected to CERN's proton synchroton booster (PSB). ISOLDE is currently the longest-running facility in operation at CERN, with continuous developments of the facility and its experiments keeping ISOLDE at the forefront of science with RIBs. ISOLDE benefits a wide range of physics communities with applications covering nuclear, atomic, molecular and solid-state physics, but also biophysics and astrophysics, as well as high-precision experiments looking for physics beyond the Standard Model. The facility is operated by the ISOLDE Collaboration, comprising CERN and sixteen (mostly) European countries. As of 2019, close to 1,000 experimentalists around the world (including all continents) are coming to ISOLDE to perform typically 50 different experiments per year. Radioactive nuclei are produced at ISOLDE by shooting a high-energy (1.4GeV) beam of protons delivered by CERN's PS