The GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH (GSI) operates an accelerator complex which consists of the linear accelerator UNILAC, the heavy-ion synchrotron SIS18 and the experimental storage-cooler ring ESR. Ions of all elements, from hydrogen to uranium, can be accelerated up to momenta given by the 18 Tm maximum rigidity of the SIS18. Even for uranium beams this corresponds to velocities of more than 90% of the velocity of light. Moreover, beams of artificially created unstable nuclei - radioactive ion beams - are available for the research programme, as well as beams of highly ionized atoms up to bare uranium and beams of secondary pions.

The accelerators are complemented by some 20 experimental areas, equipped with modern spectrometers and detector systems, which offer outstanding opportunities for fundamental studies in hadron and nuclear matter research and in the fields of nuclear and atomic physics. At the same time, also forefront application-oriented research is being performed in plasma physics, material science, biophysics and radiation medicine. The laboratory has thus become a focal point where scientists from both domestic and foreign universities and other research institutions collaborate.

Within the next years, FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research) will be commisioned. With the increase in energy and intensity of ion beams by factor 20, beams of protons, antiprotons and unstable nuclei supplied by FAIR in brilliant quality, new challenging research topics can be addressed. Beams supplied by GSI and FAIR offer such a large spectrum for high-energy particle research, that more than 2400 scientists worldwide have already declared their interest in performing experiments at those facilities.

GSI is operating a large accelerator complex consisting of the linear accelerator UNILAC, the heavy-ion synchrotron SIS18 and the experimental storage and cooler ring ESR, which are offering both stable ion beams and relativistic radioactive ion beams.

UNILAC

The UNILAC accelerates a wide variety of ion species, including uranium, to energies up to 11.4 MeV/u. UNILAC beams are either fed to various experimental stations or to the next accelerator stage.

State-of-the-art equipment dedicated to nuclear, atomic, biophysics and applications at the UNILAC are: the velocity filter SHIP and the gas-filled separator TASCA for the separation and detection of super-heavy elements, the various experimental stations for materials science and a laser facility for generating hadron beams (protons and neutrons) up to 40 MeV/u.

SIS18

SIS18 accelerates all ions up to approximately 2 GeV/u for carbon, 4.2 GeV for protons, and around 1 GeV/u for uranium. Exotic nuclei are produced, identified, and separated in the Fragment Separator (FRS).

In the storage ring ESR, equipped with powerful stochastic and electron cooling devices, stable or radioactive ion beams can be stored and cooled up to energies of approximately 560 MeV/u (for uranium).  It is a unique experimental facility at GSI/FAIR and provides Schottky mass spectrometry as well as isochronous time-of-flight mass spectrometry, an internal gas-jet target for atomic spectroscopy and nuclear reaction studies.

CRYRING@ESR offers cooled primary and secondary beams of 4 MeV/u down to 10 keV/u. It is equipped with internal ion sources for stand-alone experiments with stable beams.

SIS18 is serving the HADES (High Acceptance Dilepton Spectrometer) setup with direct beams and secondary pion beams for experiments and provides direct beams for various experimental stations dedicated to materials research and biophysics for irradiation experiments combined with in-situ characterization of materials and/or biological specimen; and multipurpose test stations, e.g., for tests of electronic components, or of detectors built for particle/nuclear physics and also for space missions.

The fragment separator FRS for production and in-flight separation of exotic nuclei serves a number of experimental sites for research on nuclei at and beyond the driplines.

FAIR

The existing GSI accelerator facilities will serve as injectors for the FAIR facility. The centerpiece of the FAIR facility is the SIS100 synchrotron and the Super-FRS.

SIS100 will provide high intensity beams of U²⁸⁺ (5×10¹¹/cycle up to 2.7 GeV/u) and U⁹²⁺ (4×10¹⁰/cycle up to 10 GeV/u). It will become operational by the end of 2028.

The Super-FRS is planned to be available with SIS18 beams for first experiments by the end of 2027.

Dedicated experimental equipment for nuclear structure investigations at FRS@GSI and later at Super-FRS@FAIR are: the R3B nuclear reaction setup with dipole magnet GLAD to study collective states and complete kinematics reactions is available for experiments.

The Ion Catcher facility for experiments with thermalized exotic nuclei for mass measurements and isomer studies with a multiple-reflection time-of-flight mass spectrometer, for decay spectroscopy, and a suite of high-resolution Ge detectors and fast-timing arrays for atomic and nuclear spectroscopy experiments.

The Super-FRS of FAIR will allow for unprecedented experiments with exotic nuclear beams at relativistic energies; its large acceptance and higher primary intensities makes experiments possible, which cannot be performed at GSI today.

SIS100@FAIR will deliver high intensity primary beams to the CBM experiment, dedicated to study baryonic matter at highest densities created in heavy-ion collisions.

IT and instrumentation capabilities

In addition, equipment and projects dedicated to other or multidisciplinary research are: the highly energy efficient computing center “Green IT-Cube”, currently equipped with close to 54,000 cores and 400 GPUs, and 70 PB disk storage for data analysis and simulations; for atomic physics, the chain of trapping and storage facilities for heavy, highly-charged ions (ESR, CRYRING, HITRAP) all equipped with a broad variety of dedicated instrumentation.

Services currently offered by the infrastructure

GSI-FAIR is a user facility open to national and international user groups. The beam time application procedure is described in details here.
On top of the wide breadth of available experimental infrastructures described above, all experimental facilities including electronics, computing, etc. are provided free of charge to research groups with approved experiments.
Total number of users from the nuclear and hadron physics community: 1380, thereof 93% external. Total number of users from the atomic physics, biophysics and materials science community: 450 users/year thereof 91% external.

GSI as a user facility is open to national and international user groups. To apply for access to the accelerator and experimental facilities, a written project proposal has to be submitted to an international Program Advisory Committees, the GSI General Program Advisory Committee (G-PAC) or one of the sub-PAC for materials research, for biophysics and radiobiology or for PHELIX and plasma physics. If a user group in addition applies for EC support under one of the Integrated Infrastructure Initiatives (Transnational Access) of HORIZON EUROPE, a separate funding application has to be submitted. This is reviewed by a User Selection Panel specific to the Access Project.

The General PAC presently has 12 external members, with more than half of them coming from universities or research institutes outside Germany. The HADRON-2030 User Selection Panel has as members the research director of GSI, the manager of the Access Project and 3 external scientists of the G-PAC.

In a first round the G-PAC evaluates all of the submitted proposals on the basis of scientific merit and makes recommendations concerning the beamtime to be allocated to each project. In a second step the HADRON-2030 User Selection Panel then reviews the funding applications. The panel evaluates the time and the amount of travel requested for setting up and executing the experiment and decides on the person-days and travel to be allocated to the proposal in question.

Once a proposal has acquired the status of an accepted experiment, a GSI contact person (at least of postdoctoral level) is assigned to each external group. This contact person gives support in all practical aspects, including the beam time scheduling.

Beam time scheduling is managed by the GSI beam time coordinator. He acts in close contact with the users and their GSI contact person, with the accelerator division and with an internal GSI Round Table Committee that is responsible for coordinating the scientific and technical requirements connected with the use of the accelerator facilities. Requests for scheduling have to be made on a special form, the GSI Beam Time Scheduling Request. For electronic submission this form is available on the website Beam Time.

Eligible research teams (so-called user groups) are composed of one or more researchers whose majority and user group leader are employed either in EU Member States other than Germany or in one of the Associated States (the three candidate countries Croatia, Macedonia and Turkey and the five countries Iceland, Liechtenstein, Israel, Norway and Switzerland). They must be entitled to disseminate the knowledge generated under the project carried out at GSI. Their interest should lie in the field of hadron physics. If participating in a larger collaboration, the own scientific goals of the user group need to be stated clearly.

Financial support within the HADRON-2030 Transnational Access Activity is on a per night day basis and amounts to a 90€ flat rate per night (fees must be collected). Travel (and accomodation) expenses will be reimbursed (economy fares) up to 350€. 

The spokesperson of an eligible users group submits an application for funding under HADRON-2030, 'Transnational Access to GSI'. The respective form is available  here. If you would like to participate, please fill in the application form.

Please send your signed applications to:

Dr. Yvonne Leifels

GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH

Planckstr. 1

64291 Darmstadt

Germany

phone: +49 6159 71 2667

fax: +49 6159 71 3622

email: hadron2030 (at) gsi.de

Users of HADRON-2030 'Access to GSI' are requested to register at least one week prior to their travel to GSI to provide us with information on their respective project acronym, individual user data, and the relevant travel information.

After your arrival at GSI, please contact Mrs. Y. Leifels (KBW, Room 4.16, phone 2767) to settle the travel cost statement.

Please use the form: Statement of Travel Costs.

Please make sure that all publications resulting from work performed in the framework of the supported project include the following acknowledgment: "This work has been supported by the European Community Horizon 2020 – research and innovation programme, contract HADRON-2030 n° 101292522".

Please keep GSI informed of all the publications referred to above by sending the references to Yvonne Leifels by e-mail (hadron2030 (at) gsi.de).

Each spokesperson of a user group supported under an EC Research Infrastructure contract will be requested to complete a "EC User Group Questionnaire" to be submitted once by each user group as soon as the experiments on the infrastructure come to end.