Future prospects for secondary-beam production Original Research Article

This contribution discusses the characteristics of different types of nuclear reactions and the influence of the beam energy in view of future prospects for secondary-beam production. First, electronic interactions in the target are considered because they define the usable target thickness. Rather high beam energies are advantageous. Secondly, the nuclear-reaction aspects are discussed. Three reaction mechanisms provide the most promising prospects for the production of secondary beams. Fusion is best suited for the production of nuclei near the proton drip line and for the heaviest elements. Fission specifically populates mid-mass neutron-rich isotopes. Fragmentation and spallation reactions represent rather universal production mechanisms for both neutron-deficient and neutron-rich exotic nuclei, since the fluctuations in the N-over-Z ratio are very important. Due to these large fluctuations, this is the most promising reaction mechanism to reach extremely exotic nuclei over the whole mass range, if sufficiently high primary-beam intensities are available. In particular, it seems to be a unique process for the production of extremely neutron-rich isotopes of elements above the region of fission fragments. These considerations are verified with experimental data. In particular, a systematic overview on the production of residual nuclei in reactions at relativistic energies has been obtained in several experiments recently performed at GSI in inverse kinematics. They allow to give a rather realistic estimate on the prospects for secondary-beam production in next-generation facilities.