Gas-filled separators - An overview

Gas-filled recoil separators have been used in nuclear physics studies since the early fifties. Most notably, they have found use in the separation of evaporation residues of heavy and very heavy elements from unwanted background. Gas-filled separators, alone or coupled to a detector array, offer an efficient, fast, compact and relatively inexpensive solution for nuclear structure studies. A new application is the use of a gas-filled device as a pre-separator in the study of chemical properties of the heaviest elements. Other uses include systematic study of fusion evaporation cross sections and accelerator mass spectrometry. In this contribution, an overview on gas-filled recoil separators, their characteristics, fields of application and possible future developments is given. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.