It was the first accelerator to reach 1 GeV of particle energy. In 1970 it began the operation of its Tandem Van de Graaf accelerator. This puts it in the class with the largest accelerators in the world. It is being optimized for the acceleration of heavy ions, seeking to create a quark-gluon plasma state to examine conditions which existed a tiny fraction of a second after the big bang.
Ions ranging from hydrogen to uranium are available.
These may be used independently, or one machine may be used as the injector for the other. The HITL now makes it possible for the Tandem to serve as the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider's ions source. NASA used the Tandem to do heavy ion bombardment to test components of the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft.