Although ISIS will continue to operate for many years to come, plans for a new facility will be developed over the next decade in order to be ready for construction sometime after 2030. This will maintain and enhance the UK's neutron provision, in a way complementary to the ESS, in order to continue to support the UK research community.
A project has been established to consider the requirements for an ISIS-replacement facility, and to explore the technologies that might underpin this. This work includes considering the science drivers for neutrons and muons over coming decades and how these will influence the design of new neutron and muon instrumentation. In turn, these considerations affect the nature of the source and hence the accelerator characteristics. Feasibility work on accelerator possibilities is ongoing, with the aim of ramping this up over coming years. Alongside this, we will be developing the science case in consultation with the ISIS user community.
The UK research community is at the forefront of neutron scattering through having ISIS as a national source in addition to access to the ILL and the ESS in the future. ISIS-II will maintain the UK's position and provide many more years of pure and applied studies using neutrons and muons.
User community consultations on ISIS-II
A webinar giving information on the ISIS-II project was held in March 2024 - see below for details and access to the talks.
In October 2024, a set of focus groups was held at ISIS involving around 40 members of the community. These groups were tasked with developing the science case for ISIS-II. They were asked to consider likely science needs on the timescales of ISIS-II, in order that facility capabilities can be shaped in the light of these. The results from these groups are currently being written up, and will be presented at the UK Neutron and Muon Science and User Meeting (NMSUM, Warwick) in March 2025. The final afternoon of the NMSUM meeting, 19 March 2024, will be devoted to a discussion of ISIS-II science, and we encourage members of the community to attend to help with shaping the ISIS-II science case.
