SOLEROO: A solenoidal exotic rare isotope separator at the Australian National University

A low-mass radioactive ion beam capability in Australia has been developed using a 6.5 T superconducting solenoid as the separator element. The separator, called SOLEROO, separates the large background of primary-beam particles from the radioactive species of interest. A further rejection of remnant unwanted nuclear species leaving the solenoid is achieved by tracking each emerging particle and identifying them event-by-event using a pair of position sensitive parallel plate avalanche counters. With primary 7Li beam current of 1eμA, a 6He production rate of 1.2×105s−1 has been achieved. The tagged secondary beam will be combined with a high efficiency 512 pixel silicon detector array for nuclear experiments.