THE FACILITY FOR ANTIPROTON AND ION RESEARCH FAIR

On October 4th, 2010, nine countries signed the international agreement on the construction of the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research FAIR. The new facility is going to be constructed within the next eight years adjacent to the existing accelerator complex of the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research at Darmstadt/Germany, expanding the research goals and technical possibilities substantially. Providing a broad spectrum of unprecedented fore-front research at worldwide unique accelerator and experimental facilities, FAIR will open the way for a large variety of experiments in hadron, nuclear, atomic and plasma physics as well as applied sciences which will be briefly described in this article.