ABSTRACT
Isotope separators are installed on-line to accelerators and reactors at many laboratories worldwide. Critical aspects of such facilities are described, including isotope-production techniques, types of ion sources and separation quality. An on-line isotope separator is any device that accepts directly the products of a nuclear reaction and produces with them an accelerated beam that is magnetically separated into individual beams, each characterized by a unique atomic mass. On-line isotope separators provide the only available means for studying the atomic spectroscopy of short-lived isotopes. In an attempt to avoid these difficulties, several separator groups have coupled a He-jet system, in which recoil nuclei are thermalized in helium gas, to an ion source through a skimmer. The central element of the UNISOR system is a cylindrically-symmetric fibre-optic detector, which collects light over 10 cm of the beam path and directs it onto a photomultiplier.
