• W. Fischer, E.N. Beebe, D. Bruno, D.M. Gassner, X. Gu, R.C. Gupta, J. Hock, A.K. Jain, R.F. Lambiase, Y. Luo, M. Mapes, W. Meng, C. Montag, B. Oerter, M. Okamura, A.I. Pikin, D. Raparia, Y. Tan, R. Than, J.E. Tuozzolo, W. Zhang
  BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York

In polarized proton operation the luminosity of RHIC is limited by the head-on beam-beam effect, and methods that mitigate the effect will result in higher peak and average luminosities. Two electron lenses, one for each ring, are being constructed to partially compensate the head-on beam-beam effect in the two rings. An electron lens consists of a low energy electron beam that creates the same amplitude dependent transverse kick as the proton beam. We discuss design consideration, present the main parameters, and estimate the performance gains.

• M.G. Minty, A.J. Curcio, W.C. Dawson, C. Degen, Y. Luo, G.J. Marr, B. Martin, A. Marusic, K. Mernick, P. Oddo, T. Russo, V. Schoefer, R. Schroeder, C. Schultheiss, M. Wilinski
  BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York

Precision measurement and control of the betatron tunes and betatron coupling in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) are required for establishing and maintaining both good operating conditions and, particularly during the ramp to high beam energies, high proton beam polarization. While the proof-of-principle for simultaneous tune and coupling feedback was successfully demonstrated earlier, routine application of these systems has only become possible recently. Following numerous modifications for improved measurement resolution and feedback control, the time required to establish full-energy beams with the betatron tunes and coupling regulated by feedback was reduced from several weeks to a few hours. A summary of these improvements, select measurements benefitting from the improved resolution and a review of system performance are the subject of this report.

• Y. Luo
  BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York

SimTrack is a simple C++ library designed for numeric particle tracking in high energy accelerators. It adopts a 4th order symplectic integrator for optical transportat in the magnetic elements. 4-D and 6-D weak-strong beam-beam treatments are included for beam-beam studies. It provides versatile functions to manage elements and lines. New type of elements can be easily created in the library. It calculates Twiss and coupling, fits tunes and chromaticities, and corrects closed orbits. During tracking, the parameters of elements can be changed or modulated on the fly.

• K.A. Brown, L. Ahrens, M. Bai, J. Beebe-Wang, M. Blaskiewicz, J.M. Brennan, D. Bruno, C. Carlson, R. Connolly, T. D'Ottavio, R. De Maria, K.A. Drees, W. Fischer, W. Fu, C.J. Gardner, D.M. Gassner, J.W. Glenn, Y. Hao, M. Harvey, T. Hayes, L.T. Hoff, H. Huang, J.S. Laster, R.C. Lee, V. Litvinenko, Y. Luo, W.W. MacKay, M. Mapes, G.J. Marr, A. Marusic, K. Mernick, R.J. Michnoff, M.G. Minty, C. Montag, J. Morris, S. Nemesure, B. Oerter, F.C. Pilat, V. Ptitsyn, G. Robert-Demolaize, T. Roser, T. Russo, P. Sampson, J. Sandberg, T. Satogata, V. Schoefer, C. Schultheiss, F. Severino, K. Smith, D. Steski, S. Tepikian, C. Theisen, P. Thieberger, D. Trbojevic, N. Tsoupas, J.E. Tuozzolo, G. Wang, M. Wilinski, A. Zaltsman, K. Zeno, S.Y. Zhang
  BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York

Since the last successful RHIC Au+Au run in 2007 (Run7), the RHIC experiments have made numerous detector improvements and upgrades. In order to benefit from the enhanced detector capabilities and to increase the yield of rare events in the acquired heavy ion data a significant increase in luminosity is essential. In Run7 RHIC achieved an average store luminosity of <L>=12x10²⁶ cm^-2 s^-1 by operating with 103 bunches (out of 110 possible), and by squeezing to β*=0.8 m. Our goal for this year's run, Run10, was to achieve an average of <L>=27x10²⁶ cm^-2 s^-1. The measures taken were decreasing β* to 0.6 m, and reducing longitudinal and transverse emittances by means of bunched-beam stochastic cooling. In addition we introduced a lattice to suppress intra-beam scattering (IBS) in both RHIC rings, upgraded the RF system, and separated transition crossings in both rings while ramping. We present an overview of the changes and the results in terms of Run10 increased instantaneous luminosity, luminosity lifetime, and integrated luminosity.

• C. Montag, L. Ahrens, M. Bai, J. Beebe-Wang, M. Blaskiewicz, J.M. Brennan, K.A. Brown, D. Bruno, R. Connolly, T. D'Ottavio, K.A. Drees, A.V. Fedotov, W. Fischer, G. Ganetis, C.J. Gardner, J.W. Glenn, H. Hahn, M. Harvey, T. Hayes, H. Huang, P.F. Ingrassia, J.P. Jamilkowski, A. Kayran, J. Kewisch, R.C. Lee, D.I. Lowenstein, A.U. Luccio, Y. Luo, W.W. MacKay, Y. Makdisi, N. Malitsky, G.J. Marr, A. Marusic, M.P. Menga, R.J. Michnoff, M.G. Minty, J. Morris, B. Oerter, F.C. Pilat, P.H. Pile, E. Pozdeyev, V. Ptitsyn, G. Robert-Demolaize, T. Roser, T. Russo, T. Satogata, V. Schoefer, C. Schultheiss, F. Severino, M. Sivertz, K. Smith, S. Tepikian, P. Thieberger, D. Trbojevic, N. Tsoupas, J.E. Tuozzolo, A. Zaltsman, A. Zelenski, K. Zeno, S.Y. Zhang
  BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York

During the second half of Run-9, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) provided polarized proton collisions at two interaction points with both longitudinal and vertical spin direction. Despite an increase in the peak luminosity by up to 40%, the average store luminosity did not increase compared to previous runs. We discuss the luminosity limitations and polarization performance during Run-9.

• W. Fischer, J. Beebe-Wang, Y. Luo, S. Nemesure
  BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
• L.K. Rajulapati
  SBU, Stony Brook, New York

The RHIC beam lifetime in polarized proton operation is dominated by the beam-beam effect, parameter modulations, and nonlinear magnet errors in the interaction region magnets. Sextupole and skew sextupole errors have been corrected deterministically for a number of years based on tune shift measurements with orbit bumps in the triplets. During the most recent polarized proton run 10- and 12-pole correctors were set through an iterative procedure, and used for the first time operationally in one of the beams. We report on the procedure to set these high-order multipole correctors and estimate their effect on the integrated luminosity.

• W. Fischer, Y. Luo, C. Montag
  BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York

Electron lenses for the head-on beam-beam compensation are under construction at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The bunch length is of the same order as the beta-function at the interaction point, and a proton passing through another proton bunch experiences a substantial phase shift which modifies the beam-beam interaction. We review the effect of the bunch length in the single pass beam-beam interaction, apply the same analysis to a proton passing through a long electron lens, and study the single pass beam-beam compensation with long bunches.

• Y. Luo, W. Fischer
  BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York

An electron lens was proposed to compensate the head-on beam-beam effect for polarized proton operations in the Relativistic Heady Ion Collider (RHIC). With head-on beam-beam compensation, we plan to reduce the beam-beam tune footprint and increase the beam-beam parameter to increase the luminosity. Here we carry out 6-D weak-strong beam-beam simulations to study the stability of proton particles and the proton beam lifetime in the presence of head-on beam-beam compensation. The effects and tolerances of the errors and noises in the compensation are also calculated.

• Y. Luo, W. Fischer, G. Robert-Demolaize, S. Tepikian, D. Trbojevic
  BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York

In this article, based on the contributions of the chromatic sextupole families to the half-integer resonance driving terms, we discuss how to sort the chromatic sextupoles in the arcs of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) to easily and effectively correct the second order chromaticities. We propose an online method with 4 knobs or 4 pairs of chromatic sextupole families to correct second order chromaticities. Numerical simulations support this method and shows that it improves the balance of correction strengths among the sextupole families and avoids reversal of sextupole polarities, as well as yielding larger dynamic apertures for the 2009 RHIC 100 GeV polarized proton run.