Contents I. Introduction
The fair-project is an international accelerator facility of the next generation. It builds on the experience and technological developments already made at the existing GSI facility, and incorporates new technological concepts. At its heart is a double ring facility with a circumference of 1100 meters. A system of cooler-storage rings for effective beam cooling at high energies and various experimental halls will be connected to the facility. The existing GSI accelerators-together with the planned proton-linac-serve as injector for the new facility. The double-ring synchrotron will provide ion beams of unprecedented intensities as well as of considerably increased energy. Thereby intense secondary particle beams-unstable nuclei or antiprotons-can be produced. The system of storage-cooler rings allows the quality of these secondary beams—their energy spread and emittance—to be drastically improved. Moreover, in connection with the double ring synchrotron, an efficient parallel operation of up to four scientific programs can be realized at a time. The project is based on many technological innovations. From magnetic point of view these are the fast ramped superconducting magnets of the SIS100 and SIS300 accelerators as well as the huge dipole and multiplet modules of the Super-FRS in-flight separator with a rigidity of up to 20 . Whereas the Super-FRS is part of the modularized start version and is planned to be built in parallel to the SIS100, the second synchrotron SIS300 is not included in the start version of FAIR and will be incorporated in the facility at a later time. Nevertheless, all the planning of the buildings etc. is done in a way that makes a later integration of this machine as easy as possible.
