GANIL-SPIRAL2: A NEW ERA

GANIL presently offers unique opportunities in nuclear physics and many other fields that arise from not only the provision of low-energy stable beams, fragmentation beams and re-accelerated radioactive species, but also from the availability of a wide range of state-of-the-art spectrometers and instrumentation. An overview of the physics with secondary beams carried out at GANIL is presented. Selected examples of recent experiments using fragmentation of high energy intense stable heavy ions beams and reaccelerated SPIRAL1 “exotic” beams and the associated instruments are used to illustrate the ongoing physics program. With the construction of SPIRAL2 over the next few years, GANIL is in a good position to retain its world-leading capability. As selected by the ESFRI committee, the next generation of ISOL facility in Europe is represented by the SPIRAL2 project to be built at GANIL (Caen, France). The future prospects of the accelerator complex GANIL-SPIRAL1 and the path towards SPIRAL2 is also briefly introduced.