On 24 February, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science (DOE-SC) approved the start of execution of a $49.7 million instrument at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB). DOE-SC granted Critical Decision 2/3 approval to FRIB at Michigan State University (MSU) for the start of execution of the High Transmission Beam Line (HTBL), one of the two segments of the High Rigidity Spectrometer (HRS). Since 2012, DOE-SC has invested more than $1.5 billion into FRIB and its scientific operations. DOE-SC now furthers its investment in FRIB science with this $49.7 million instrument.

HRS is a scientific instrument that will serve as the core of FRIB’s fast-beam program. The HRS user group includes over 500 scientists from 21 U.S. universities, five national laboratories, and laboratories in Canada, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom. HRS will significantly extend FRIB’s scientific reach for neutron-rich isotopes. Such isotopes are otherwise only created in exploding and colliding stars. With HRS, the luminosity for experiments with the most neutron-rich and interesting nuclei will increase by a factor of up to 100. 

With near 100-percent efficiency, HRS will transmit isotopes that travel at velocities high enough for optimal rare-isotope production rates—around 50 percent of the speed of light. The high-velocity transmissions allow the foils in the rare-isotope production target—where reactions between isotopes take place—to be much thicker, greatly increasing the potential of a desired isotope reaction. HRS will enable scientists to identify the properties of isotopes, such as mass, charge, and velocity, created in these rare-isotope reactions.