Lanzhou Heavy Ion Research Facility (HIRFL), also known as Lanzhou heavy ion accelerator, is the largest heavy ion research facility in China, which can accelerate all ions from hydrogen to uranium to high energy. It consists of three generations of major scientific projects in the first five year plan, Seventh Five Year Plan and ninth five year plan, including ECR ion source, SFC, SSC and SSC linear injector_ Linac), cooling storage ring main ring and experimental ring (CSR), radioactive beam line, experimental terminal and other research facilities are used to carry out heavy ion physics and interdisciplinary research.

In the early 1960s, the Institute of modern physics built the 1.5-meter classical cyclotron of the national "first five year" science project. In the early 1970s, the 1.5m cyclotron was transformed into an accelerator that can accelerate heavy and heavy ions to 17-35mev, and the basic research of low energy heavy ion physics was carried out in China.

In 1988, the main accelerator SSc and injector SFC of HIRFL, the national science and technology project of the Seventh Five Year Plan, were built. Their main technical indexes reached the international advanced level at that time. In 1992, they won the first prize of national science and technology progress award. Combined operation of SSc and SFC can accelerate heavy ions to medium energy 110mev, which can be used to study the synthesis of new nuclides far away from the stable line, heavy ion collisions at low and medium energy, thermonuclear properties and heavy ion beam applications.

In July 2008, the cooling storage ring (CSR), as a national "Ninth Five Year" scientific project, passed the national acceptance and was officially put into operation. In 2012, it won the second prize of national science and technology progress award. As the largest high-energy heavy ion accelerator in China, HIRFL-CSR can accelerate heavy ions to 2.8gev, and can carry out interdisciplinary research on heavy ion science and technology, advanced nuclear energy system driven by accelerator and heavy ion treatment of tumor.

December 2019, SSC_ Linac has built and debugged the beam with SSc, which indicates that HIRFL has entered a new era of dual parallel beam feeding! SSC linac can significantly improve the beam intensity of SSC, which is beneficial for CSRm to accelerate the development of high energy and high charge heavy ion beam and its scientific experiments.

Up to now, HIRFL has built and operated 20 experimental terminals, with an annual experimental beam feeding time of more than 5000 hours. More than 150 user experiments have been completed annually, and more than 50% of the experiments are dominated by foreign users, accumulating more than 200 user units at home and abroad.