Objective
GANIL plays the role of an international user heavy-ion facility for the Nuclear Physics as well as the Atomic and Condensed Matter Physics Communities. It provides heavy-ion beams from 3He to Uranium in the energy range 5-100 MeV/u.
GANIL welcomes already more than 400 physicists every year from all over the world coming here in order to perform their own experiments. It is presently one of the key-laboratories worldwide because of the high quality of its beams, the diversity of the very performing existing experimental equipments and the technical assistance provided to outside users.
Recently, the new SISSI apparatus has been set into operation and allows the production of quite intense high energy secondary beams which are now routinely available for the users.
Moreover, a secondary beam facility is now under construction which has been supported by NUPECC. This is SPIRAL (Systhme de Production d'Ions Radioactifs et d'Acciliration en Ligne) which will deliver in 1998 radioactive beams in the energy range 2 to 25 MeV/u. It is intended to make this unique facility the European Radioactive Ion Beam facility. This will open entirely new areas of research in nuclear physics, astrophysics and condensed matter physics.
All these new developments leads us to propose that GANIL be considered as a 'European host research laboratory for interaction studies between heavy ions and matter using stable and exotic beams'.