Commissioning of the S3 Spectrometer: advances, challenges and outlook

The linear accelerator of the SPIRAL2 facility at GANIL delivers both light ions to study nuclear reactions with neutrons in the Neutron for Science (NFS) experimental hall, and heavier ions to produce exotic nuclei, like heavy and super heavy nuclei, in the Super Separator Spectrometer (S3). By combining electromagnetic components and thanks to their very large aperture, S3 is a powerful tool to purify most of the elements of interest produced in the target from the primary intense ion beam, and retrieving them up to the focal plane to analyse them. The search for very rare events in nuclear reactions requires advanced technics that are not standard in our laboratories, which in S3 are fulfilled by the 7 iron-free superconducting multipoles triplets, the large gap of the electric dipole, the high performance movable beam dump and the fully instrumented target station. This presentation will introduce the advanced beam optic scheme, cover the current challenges encountered in qualifying the S3 spectrometer's main components, and more generally give an overview of the on-going commissioning of this new scientific facility at GANIL.