The Experimental Storage Ring (ESR) - recent developments

The Experimental Storage Ring (ESR) at GSI Darmstadt, Germany is the core instrument for unique physics experiments. It is operated for accumulation, storage, cooling and deceleration of a wide range of heavy ion beams in the energy range from 4-400 MeV/u coming from the synchrotron SIS18 via the FRagment Separator (FRS) or a direct transport line. Low energy decelerated beams can also be fast extracted to the storage ring CRYRING or to the HITRAP facility. The overview of the ESR performance, will be presented here. The features and challenges of the operation with the new control system LSA (LHC Software Architecture) will be outlined as well.