Production of Intense Radioactive Ion-beams Using 2 Accelerators

An intense beam (1.5*10/sup 8/ particles/sec) of radioactive /sup 13/N/sup 1+/ ions (half-life: /b T//sub 1/2/=10 min) has been produced and accelerated to 0.65 MeV/nucleon, by coupling two cyclotrons with an electron cyclotron resonance ion source. This is the first time a short-lived radioactive ion beam has been produced by this method, at such an energy and with such a high intensity, a result which opens up a wide field in many applications. The first experiment along these lines will be the measurement of the cross section for the nuclear reaction /sup 1/H( /sup 13/N, gamma )/sup 14/O which is the crucial reaction for the operation of the so-called hot CNO cycle in nuclear astrophysics.Anglai