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Abstract

The ISOLDE Facility is the radioactive beam facility at CERN dedicated to the production, study and research of nuclei far from stability. Exotic nuclei of most chemical elements are available for the study of nuclear structure, nuclear astrophysics, fundamental symmetries and atomic physics, as well as for applications in condensed matter and life sciences. For more than a decade it has offered the largest variety of post-accelerated radioactive beams in the world. ISOLDE is the oldest experiment currently running at CERN. The key ingredient to the long lifetime of the facility is the wide range of isotopes that can be produced by CERN's high–energy beams and the accumulated experience in construction of target-ion source units that provide purified beams of individual isotopes. ISOLDE will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first radioactive beams in 2017. The capabilities of this ISOL-facility have improved dramatically over the years, and its status has changed gradually as well, growing from an experiment into a facility fully integrated in the CERN infrastructure. A previous ISOLDE laboratory portrait covering the first period of ISOLDE was published in the volume Hyperfine Interactions 129 (2000). In the present issue we invite the ISOLDE community to review the achievements obtained at ISOLDE since this period. We also plan to have individual contributions to give us a snapshot of the present activity.