ATLAS is the first superconducting linear accelerator (linac) for heavy ions at energies in the vicinity of the Coulomb barrier and is open to scientists from all over the world.

The ATLAS linac is constructed with seven different superconducting resonator designs, each one creating an electromagnetic wave of a different velocity.

The experiment areas contain scattering chambers, spectrometers and spectrographs, beamlines, a gamma-ray facility, and particle detectors.

In 2009, Argonne added a system called CARIBU (Californium Rare Ion Breeder Upgrade) to ATLAS.

[3] The energy levels of the ions produced by ATLAS are ideal to study the properties of the nucleus.