SEMINAR      Friday, 14 January 2005 - h. 15:00  Auditorium B. Touschek     E. Widmann  (SMI, Vienna) FLAIR A Facility for Low-Energy Antiproton and Ion Research Abstract The future accelerator facility for beams of ions and antiprotons at Darmstadt [1] will provide antiproton beams of intensities that are two orders of magnitude higher than currently available. Within the foreseen scheme, antiprotons can be decelerated to 30 MeV. The low-energy antiproton community has recently formed a users group to make use of this opportunity to create a next-generation low-energy antiproton facility called FLAIR. A letter of intent [2] has been submitted for a new facility that goes far beyond the current Antiproton Decelerator at CERN by providing cooled antiproton beams using two storage rings of 300 keV and 20 keV minimum energy. The availability of low-emittance beams at these low energies will greatly enhance the density of antiprotons stopped in dilute gases or ion traps for precision spectroscopy. FLAIR will also provide slow extracted (i.e. continuous) beams of antiprotons, thereby enabling nuclear and particle physics type experiments which need coincidence techniques. Using internal targets in the storage rings, atomic collision experiments with ultra-low energy antiprotons and ions can be performed for the first time. The letter of intent for FLAIR has been very positively evaluated by a program advisory committee of GSI, and a technical proposal is now being prepared, due January 15, 2005. If this proposal will be approved and funding can be secured, FLAIR could start operation around 2011. [1] An International Accelerator Facility for Beams of Ions and Antiprotons, Conceptual Design Report, GSI. Available from http://www-new.gsi.de/zukunftsprojekt/index_e.html [2] FLAIR letter of intent, available from http://www-linux.gsi.de/~flair/