G. Marr

Accelerating polarized protons to 250 GeV

The relativistic heavy ion collider (RHIC) as the first high energy polarized proton collider was designed to provide polarized proton collisions at a maximum beam energy of 250 GeV. It has been providing collisions at a beam energy of 100 GeV since 2001. Equipped with two full Siberian snakes in each ring, polarization is preserved during the acceleration from injection to 100 GeV with careful control of the betatron tunes and the vertical orbit distortions. However, the intrinsic spin resonances beyond 100 GeV are about a factor of two stronger than those below 100 GeV making it important to examine the impact of these strong intrinsic spin resonances on polarization survival and the tolerance for vertical orbit distortions. Polarized protons were accelerated to the record energy of 250 GeV in RHIC with a polarization of 46% measured at top energy in 2006. The polarization measurement as a function of beam energy also shows some polarization loss around 136 GeV, the first strong intrinsic resonance above 100 GeV. This paper presents the results and discusses the sensitivity of the polarization survival to orbit distortions.

RHIC Performance with Stochastic Cooling for Ions and Head-on Beam-beam Compensation for Protons

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has two main operating modes with heavy ions and polarized protons respectively. In addition to a continuous increase in the bunch intensity in all modes, two major new systems were completed recently mitigating the main luminosity limit and leading to significant performance improvements. For heavy ion operation stochastic cooling mitigates the effects of intrabeam scattering, and for polarized proton operation head-on beam-beam compensation mitigates the beam-beam effect. We present the performance increases with these upgrades to date, as well as an overview of all operating modes past and planned.

Accelerating Polarized Protons to High Energy

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) is designed to provide collisions of high energy polarized protons for the quest of understanding the proton spin structure. Polarized proton collisions at a beam energy of 100 GeV have been achieved in RHIC since 2001. Recently, polarized proton beam was accelerated to 250 GeV in RHIC for the first time. Unlike accelerating unpolarized protons, the challenge for achieving high energy polarized protons is to fight the various mechanisms in an accelerator that can lead to partial or total polarization loss due to the interaction of the spin vector with the magnetic fields. We report on the progress of the RHIC polarized proton program. We also present the strategies of how to preserve the polarization through the entire acceleration chain, i.e. a 200 MeV linear accelerator, the Booster, the AGS and RHIC.

RHIC Performance with Polarized Protons in Run-6

The RHIC polarized proton run (Run‐6) in 2006 started on February 1 and continued for 21 weeks. The Run‐6 included the machine operation at different beam energies and with different orientation of beam polarization at the collision points. The machine operation at 100GeV and 31.2 GeV provided physics data of polarized proton collisions to the STAR, PHENIX and BRAHMS experiments. Record levels of the luminosity (up to 3.5⋅1031 cm−2 s−1 peak) and proton beam polarization (up to 65%) were achieved during the 100GeV operation. The beam polarization was preserved during the acceleration by using Siberian Snakes, based on helical magnets. The polarization orientation at STAR and PHENIX experiments was controlled with helical spin rotators. During different stages of the run the physics data were provided with longitudinal, vertical and horizontal orientations of the beam polarization at the collision points. Total luminosity integrals of 45 pb−1 at 100 GeV and 0.35 pb−1 at 31.2 GeV were delivered to the experi...