[3][4] Radioactive nuclei are produced at ISOLDE by shooting a high-energy (1.4GeV) beam of protons delivered by CERN's PSB accelerator on a 20 cm thick target.

The interaction of the proton beam with the target material produces radioactive species through spallation, fragmentation and fission reactions.

[5] The cocktail of produced isotopes is ultimately filtered using one of ISOLDE's two magnetic dipole mass separators to yield the desired isobar of interest.

[11] In 1950, two Danish physicists Otto Kofoed-Hansen and Karl-Ove Nielsen discovered a new technique for producing radioisotopes which enabled production of isotopes with shorter half-lives than earlier methods.

[14] The plan for an electromagnetic isotope separator was developed during 1963–4 by European nuclear physicists and, in late 1964, their proposal was accepted by the CERN Director-General and the ISOLDE project began.

[16] Separator construction made good progress in 1966, along with the appointing of Arve Kjelberg as the first ISOLDE coordinator, and the underground hall was finished in 1967.

[19] Its new target design combined with the increased beam intensity from the SC led to significant enhancements in the number of nuclides produced.

As a consequence, the collaboration decided to relocate the ISOLDE facility to the Proton Synchrotron, and place the targets in an external beam from its 1 GeV booster.

[33] In 2006, the International Advisory Board decided that upgrading ISOLDE hall with a linear post-accelerator design based on superconducting quarter-wave resonators would allow for a full-energy availability, crucially without the reduction of beam quality.

[41] In 2015, for the first time, a radioactive isotope beam could be accelerated to an energy level of 4.3 MeV per nucleon in the ISOLDE facility thanks to the HIE-ISOLDE upgrades.

[43][44] Phase 2 of the facility's HIE-ISOLDE upgrade was completed in 2018, which allows ISOLDE to accelerate radioactive beams up to 10 MeV per nucleon.

The GPS switchyard and HRS are connected to a common central beam-line used to provide beam to the various experimental setups located in the ISOLDE facility.

[52] The ISOLDE COOLer (ISCOOL) is located downstream from the HRS, and extends up to the merging switchyard joining the two mass separator beams.

ISCOOL is a general-purpose Radio Frequency Quadrupole Cooler and Buncher (RFQCB), with the purpose of cooling (improving the beam quality) and bunching the RIB from the HRS.

RILIS provides this separation by using step-wise resonance photo-ionisation, involving precisely tuned laser wavelengths matched exactly to a specific element's successive electron transition energies.

This process of laser ionisation takes place in a hot metal cavity to provide the spatial confinement needed for the atomic vapour to be illuminated.

[64][60] REX-ISOLDE was originally intended to accelerate light isotopes, but has passed this goal and provided post-accelerated beams of a wider mass range, from 6He up to 224Ra.

[65] To be able to satisfy the ever-increasing needs of higher quality, intensity, and energy of the production beam is very important for facilities such as ISOLDE.

The project included an energy increase for the REX-ISOLDE up to 10 MeV as well as resonator and cooler upgrades, enhancement of the input beam from PSB, improvements on targets, ion sources, and mass separators.

Temporary setups in the ISOLDE facility are there for shorter time periods, and generally focus on detecting specific decay modes of nuclei.

[67][68] COLLAPS studies ground and isomeric state properties of highly-unstable (exotic), short-lived nuclei, including measurements of their spins, electro-magnetic moments and charge radii.

[81] Since the start of its operation, ISOLTRAP has measured the mass of hundreds of short-lived radioactive nuclei, as well as confirming the existence of doubly magic isotopes.

[88] The Multi Ion Reflection Apparatus for CoLlinear Spectroscopy (MIRACLS) experiment determines properties exotic radioisotopes by measuring their hyperfine structure.

[93] The Versatile Ion polarisation Technique Online (VITO) experiment is a beamline used to investigate the weak interaction and determine properties of short-lived unstable nuclei.

[99] Solid state physics research (SSP) accounts for 10–15% of the yearly allocation of beam time and uses about 20–25% of the overall number of experiments running at ISOLDE.

[100] The laboratory uses the technique of Time Differential Perturbed Angular Correlation (TDPAC) to probe the large quantity of available radioactive elements provided by ISOLDE.

[103] The HIE-ISOLDE project introduced a network of High Energy Beam Transfer (HEBT) beamlines to the ISOLDE facility.

[114][115] The ISOLDE facility continuously develops the nuclear chart, and was the first to study structural evolution in long chains of noble gas, alkali elements and mercury isotopes.

Research published in 1971 showed that if single neutrons are added to or removed from the nuclei of mercury isotopes, the shape will change to a "rugby ball".

[140][141] Laser spectroscopy has been performed on a short-lived radioactive molecule, containing radium, which further studies into could reveal physics beyond the Standard Model due to time-reversal symmetry breaking.