There are machines that are built to observe what we already know and others to push matter to places where we barely know what we are going to find. In Huizhou, China has built a complex whose beam line runs two kilometers and is capable of accelerating heavy ions and direct them against atomic nuclei with an intensity that is difficult to achieve in other laboratories. It looks like an infrastructure designed for nuclear physicists. That description, however, falls short.
The decisive step came on Tuesday, July 21. The High Intensity Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility, known as HIAF, passed the acceptance review that certifies the fulfillment of its construction objectives and entered into test operation for scientific research. The project, built by the Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, had begun to rise in December 2018 and produced its first beam in October 2025. The work is finished; Now is the time to do science.
Now, the HIAF does not function as a single track through which particles enter and exit at full speed. Its architecture distributes the work between three major systems: a superconducting linear accelerator that delivers intense beams in continuous or pulsed mode, a synchrotron that accumulates the ions and takes them to higher energies, and a storage ring that allows them to be preserved while researchers carry out precision measurements.
It all starts with ions, atoms from which one or more electrons have been removed and which can be accelerated and guided by electric and magnetic fields. Those in charge of the project claim that it is the first advanced heavy ion research facility that brings together these three technologies.
A facility designed to study much more than atoms
We still don’t fully understand how many of the heavy elements we find around us formed in the universe. To piece together that story, researchers will use HIAF to produce unstable nuclei, measure how they behave and explore the frontiers at which nuclear matter stops holding together. That work also opens the door to trying to create new superheavy elements. The goal is not only to expand what we know about the periodic table, but to better understand the cosmic processes that ended up forming elements such as uranium.
The same beams that are used to investigate nuclei can also be used to subject chips, electronic components and materials to intense radiation. In space, the impact of an energetic particle can corrupt data, crash a circuit, or cause permanent damage to a component; Reproducing part of these effects on land allows them to be studied before incorporating the technology into a satellite or ship. The HIAF was also born with that function: to offer a controlled environment in which to check what resists and what fails when a device must operate under the radiation of space.
When these ions reach tissues or materials, the experiment changes scale, but not principle. Its energy can be used in the medical sector and, at the same time, to accelerate the accumulation of radiation damage in materials intended for advanced nuclear systems or to future fusion environments. We are not facing a hospital or a reactor intended to produce electricity. What the HIAF offers is something prior and decisive: a place to verify, under controlled parameters, what works, what degrades and what needs to be redesigned.
The start-up phase has already left some figures with which to measure its capacity. According to those responsible for the project, the team completed the commissioning of the beam along the two-kilometer line in 16 hours, a record among comparable installations. It also maintains that the pulsed intensities of the oxygen and bismuth beams exceeded previous international references by factors of three and 7.5, respectively. During the tests, work has already been carried out on nuclear masses, production of radioactive beams, nuclear structure and irradiation of materials. These are initial results: the HIAF is still being tested and must now demonstrate to what extent it can transform that capacity into real discoveries and applications.
Images | Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
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