Scheduled to begin regular operation in 2007, RIKEN’s cyclotron-based RI Beam Factory will be made available to the worldwide user community. Its superconducting ring cyclotron will exhibit a much higher level of heavy-ion acceleration power than any in cyclotron history, and in combination with the superconducting RI-beam separator, will single-handedly expand the world of nuclear research to a presently unreachable horizon. The new capabilities and capacities it offers will no doubt fascinate and attract a large number of nuclear experimentalists and theorists from all over the world.

In 2007, RIKEN will commemorate the 70th year since Dr. Yoshio Nishina’s cyclotron, the first in Japan, began operation in 1937. In the Nishina spirit, RIKEN has made many long, successful strides in cyclotron history, and the commissioning of the RI Beam Factory will truly represent a new dimension to this proud tradition.

With this milestone only a year away, the president of RIKEN decided to integrate RIKEN’s existing accelerator group and its accelerator-related research groups in the USA and UK into a completely new research center, the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science, inaugurated April 1, 2006.

　Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science
Hideto En'yo