RIPS upgrade and physics programs

The upgrade of RIPS has been proposed in the phase-II program of RIKEN RI Beam Factory (RIBF) project. In this upgrade, the former fragment separator RIPS will be equipped with a new beam line that delivers beams of 115$A$-MeV heavy io ns extracted from the IRC cyclotron by skipping the final acceleration of SRC. This beam energy is high enough to produce radioactive isotope beams (RIBs) via the projectile-fragmentation reaction. Thus, compared with RIBs produced in the present AVF-RRC acceleration scheme, their production yield are drastically increased by this upgrade, especially in the mass region heavier than Kr. Remarkably, RIPS further enhances research opportunities on spin-related subjects such as nuclear structure studies through electromagnetic nuclear moments: it has been revealed that RIBs produced at this energy can be spin-oriented independently of their atomic and chemical properties. Also, the research subjects include not only nuclear moments but also material science by means, e.g., of the $\beta$-NMR, $\gamma$-PAD, $\gamma$-PAC, laser, and in-beam M\"ossbauer methods, because RIBs of this energy allow for a scheme to implant them into sample materials with limited thickness and thus stopped-RI type experiments will be conveniently carried out.