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Recently, the first of three beam catcher units, an integral component of the beam line, reached the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) site in Darmstadt, Germany.

About FAIR

• The Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) is a large multipurpose particle accelerator facility being constructed at Darmstadt, Germany.
• It is being developed in cooperation with several international partners and is aimed at advancing research in particle and nuclear physics.
• India became one of the founding members of the FAIR initiative in 2010. India's contribution is funded jointly on a 50:50 basis by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Department of Atomic Energy (DAE).
• The Bose Institute, Kolkata has been designated as India's shareholder in FAIR GmbH and the nodal Indian institution for implementing the FAIR programme in India. It is an autonomous R&D institute under the Department of Science & Technology.

Beam Catcher Equipment

• The beam catcher is an important component of the Super-FRS (Super Fragment Separator), which is designed to produce radioactive beams.
• When the primary heavy-ion beam, having an energy of around 0.4–1.5 GeV/nucleon, strikes the production target, the beam catcher absorbs the remaining beam particles.
• The absorbers are housed inside a vacuum chamber maintained at approximately 10?? mbar. They are made of fine-grained graphite and hyper-pure copper and can undergo motorised horizontal and vertical movements with millimetre-scale precision.

India's Contribution

The beam catcher was designed by CSIR–Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute (CSIR-CMERI), Durgapur, under the supervision of the Bose Institute.

The development and delivery of such specialised equipment demonstrate India's growing capability in advanced scientific instrumentation and international mega-science projects.