The Super Separator Spectrometer (S-3) for the SPIRAL2 facility

The Super Separator Spectrometer S3 is, with the NFS (Neutrons For Science) facility, a major experimental system developed for SPIRAL2. It is designed for very low cross section experiments at low (<15MeV/u) energy. It will receive the very high intensity (more than 1p mu A) stable ion beams accelerated by the superconducting LINAG accelerator of SPIRAL2. S-3 will be notably used for the study of rare nuclei produced by fusion evaporation reactions, such as superheavy elements and neutron-deficient isotopes. Such experiments require a high transmission of the products of interest but also a separation of these nuclei from unwanted species. Hence S-3 must have a large acceptance but also a high selection power including physical mass resolution. These properties are reached with the use of seven large aperture superconducting quadrupole triplets which include sextupolar and octupolar corrections in a twostage separator (momentum achromat followed by a mass spectrometer) that can be coupled to the SIRIUS implantation-decay spectroscopy station or to the REGLIS(3) gas cell with laser ionization to provide very pure beams for low energy experiments. S-3 is now in the construction phase. We will present the scientific objectives of S-3 as well as the current status of the facility and its different elements.