Talk:The NSCL laboratory and the FRIB facility

That's a fine article. Some comments: 1. CCF is used from the beginning but defined only in the middle of the text

We changed the sentence where “CCF” is used for the first time to: "Figure 2 gives an overview of the rare isotope beams produced at the Coupled Cyclotron Facility (CCF) so far (2009)."

2. Figure 2 shows, in addition to what is said in the caption, information on the r and rp processes that are not described ==> describe or remove

We added a sentence to the caption of Figure 2: "In the vicinity of the proton dripline, many nuclei on the rp process path (clue line) have been reached; on the neutron-rich side of the nuclear chart, lighter r-process nuclei (dark brown line) have been accessed at NSCL."

3. There should be a figure showing the facility with the various systems discussed in the text

We added a layout figure (now Figure 3)

4. The production methods are not described (eg in-flight production of secondary nuclei) ==> put a general explanation on the modes of production exotic nuclei

5. Overall it lacks a discussion of the International context (Riken is only quickly mentioned) and international competition

We added a paragraph that briefly explains production mechanisms of rare isotopes (point 4.) and that puts the NSCL in the international context (point 5.):

Rare isotopes at NSCL are predominantly produced via projectile fragmentation. At high projectile energies, a transmission target is used to remove “participant” nucleons from the projectile nuclei while the non-interacting “spectator” part of the projectile proceeds at essentially beam velocity and close to 0° with narrow longitudinal and transversal momentum distributions. The isotopes of interest are then separated in a fragment separator and transported to the experimental end station. A related technique, in-flight projectile fission, is presently being implemented at NSCL as a production mechanism for heavy neutron-rich nuclei. Other facilities employing projectile fragmentation or fission for the production of rare-isotope beams include GSI/FAIR (Germany), RIBF/RIKEN (Japan) and GANIL (France). Another important technique for the production of exotic nuclei is the so-called isotope separation online (ISOL), where radioactive nuclei are produced and thermalized in very thick targets or target-catcher combinations and extracted for subsequent ionization and re-acceleration. This approach is used, for example, at HRIBF/ORNL (US), ISAC/TRIUMF (Canada), ISOLDE/CERN (Switzerland), and SPIRAL/GANIL (France).

6. It also lacks a presentation of major results (such as the number of new isotopes discovered at MSU, ...)

We added:

Recent research highlights include the discovery of 17 new isotopes by O.B. Tarasov and T. Baumann et al. – among others ⁴⁰Mg and ⁴²Al, β-decay half-life measurements of ⁹⁶Cd, ⁹⁸Ir and ¹⁰⁰Sn, the precision mass measurements of ^68,70Se and ⁷¹Br and the first spectroscopy of bound and unbound nuclear states in the very neutron-rich nuclei ⁴⁶S and ²⁴O ,²⁶O, respectively. See the NSCL News archive and NSCL publications for more highlights.