Stored Particle Atomic Research Collaboration

The Conceptual Design Report (CDR) on “An International Accelerator Facility for Beams of Ions and Antiprotons” formed the basis of the present Letter of Intent (LoI). The scientific motivation for a broad variety of atomic physics experiments with highly-charged heavy ions at the new facility and the first concepts of a practical realization are extensively reported in Section 2 of the CDR entitled “From Fundamentals to Applications – Quantum Electrodynamics, Strong Fields, Ion Matter Interactions”. Therefore, the first part of this LoI is restricted to a rather condensed description of the main aspects of the planned atomic physics research activities. These comprise the investigation of relativistic collision dynamics, the test of Quantum Electrodynamics in extremely strong electromagnetic fields, the use of atomic physics techniques for the determination of properties of stable and unstable nuclei, and ideas to test the predictions of fundamental theories besides Quantum Electrodynamics. In the second part of the LoI, an update of recent insights and ideas concerning the experimental realization of the proposed experiments is presented. These reach from the high-energy cave connected to SIS100 to the NESR, with sophisticated installations which are necessary for the future working horse of atomic physics, to the low energy area including HITRAP. In a subsequent part, the working packages and time-tables are listed. The proposed atomic physics research at the new facilities deals with a variety of different subjects and experiments which are small compared to those characteristic for high-energy nuclear or elementary particle physics. Therefore, the collaborations do not concentrate upon one single but upon several experiments.