Abstract
The RIKEN Nishina Center began construction of the Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory (RIBF) in 1997, and succeeded in commissioning the beam of its accelerator complex at the end of 2006. The world’s first superconducting ring cyclotron (SRC) is the final booster in the RIBF accelerator complex. It is capable of accelerating all-element heavy ions to a speed of about 70% of the speed of light. Assembly of the superconducting sector magnets was completed in August 2005. The superconducting coils were successfully cooled down and excited for tests on many operational aspects: magnetic force, coil protection and quality of magnetic field, showing that they work as designed. After a series of tests the other components were installed and tested under stray fields from the sector magnets. Local magnetic shields were supplied for the components that could not work under the stray fields. After setting the beam vacuum and radio frequency, beam commissioning started. The first beam was extracted at the end of 2006, and the first uranium beam was extracted in March 2007.
