Methods for the production of radioactive ion beams

International audienceSince the discovery of the radioactivity and of its potential applications, the nuclear matter behaviour has continuously been a major issue crucial to power production and more fundamentally to nuclei-synthesis. The first studies were performed with nuclei present on the earth, all being stable or close to the stability. To explore their history, it was necessary to produce artificially their parents, by making existing nuclei collide at sufficient energies to overcome the Coulomb barrier