The aim of the HIE-ISOLDE project is to greatly expand the physics programme compared to that of REX-ISOLDE. HIE-ISOLDE forms part of the European nuclear physics strategy, and its science case covers the majority of the key questions in nuclear structure and astrophysics pursued by our community.

The HIE-ISOLDE project contains three major elements: higher energies, improvements in beam quality and flexibility, and higher beam intensities. This requires developments in radioisotope selection, improvements in charge-breeding and target-ion source development, as well as construction of the new injector for the PS Booster, LINAC4. The most significant improvement will come from replacing most of the existing REX accelerating structure by a superconducting (SC) linear accelerator with a maximum energy of 10 MeV/u. This would allow all ISOLDE beams to be accelerated to energies well below and significantly above the Coulomb barrier, facilitating a broad programme of nuclear structure and nuclear astrophysics studies using different classes of nuclear reactions.