ATLAS

an Office of Science User Facility

Guy Savard, Scientific Director of ATLAS

Welcome to ATLAS, the Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System. ATLAS is the world's first superconducting linear accelerator for heavy ions at energies in the vicinity of the Coulomb barrier. This is the energy domain best suited to study the properties of the nucleus, the core of matter, the fuel of stars. ATLAS can provide beams of essentially all stable isotopes from proton to uranium, and a variety of light radioactive beams through our in-flight production program and heavier neutron-rich isotopes from the newly commissioned CARIBU upgrade. A one page brochure (pdf format) describing ATLAS is available here.

ATLAS is a National User Facility and as such hosts 300 - 400 Users each year. It is supported by the Office of Nuclear Physics of the Department of Energy. The Users come from U.S. universities and national laboratories as well as from foreign institutions. The facility is also accessible to industrial Users.

A mission statement for ATLAS as well as a strategic plan for the facility, last updated at a Users Workshop held in the summer of 2009, guide the operation of the accelerator and the associated experimental equipment. The strategic plan defines the facility's main goals and is aligned with the priorities of the U.S. Nuclear Physics long-range plan. The ATLAS strategic plan is available here.

Users of ATLAS take advantage of the existing experimental equipment such as, for example, the Canadian Penning Trap (CPT) mass spectrometer, the Fragment Mass Analyzer (FMA), the helical orbit spectrometer (HELIOS), the Enge magnetic spectrograph, Gammasphere and the X-Array. Beam lines are also available for experiments where Users bring their own equipment. The Physics support group is available to assist the Users in all preparations for their measurements.

Beam time at ATLAS is granted on the basis of proposals which are reviewed by the ATLAS Program Advisory Committee which meets roughly twice a year. If you are interested in proposing an experiment as a first time User, please contact our User Liaison Physicist Shaofei Zhu.

It is our hope that you, as a scientist interested in using our facility for research or as a casual visitor, will find on our website the information that you are interested in. We welcome your suggestions, comments and questions.

Guy Savard
Scientific Director of ATLAS

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If you would like additional information about ATLAS, you can also contact Ms. Barbara Weller in the Physics Division of Argonne National Laboratory at (630) 252-4044 or via email at: bweller@anl.gov