BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
Funding: Work supported by Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC02-98CH10886 with the U.S. Department of Energy.
After having provided collisions of polarized protons at a beam energy of 100 GeV since 2001, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider~(RHIC) at BNL reached its design energy of polarized proton collision at 250 GeV. With the help of the two full Siberian snakes in each ring as well as careful orbit correction and working point control, polarization was preserved during acceleration from injection to 250~GeV. During the course of the Physics data taking, the spin rotators on either side of the experiments of STAR and PHENIX were set up to provide collisions with longitudinal polarization at both experiments. Various techniques to increase luminosity like further beta star squeeze and RF system upgrades as well as gymnastics to shorten the bunch length at store were also explored during the run. This paper reports the performance of the run as well as the plan for future performance improvement in RHIC.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
Funding: Work supported by Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC02-98CH10886 with the U.S. Department of Energy.
There is significant interest in RHIC heavy ion collisions at center of mass energies of 5-50 GeV/u, motivated by a search for the QCD phase transition critical point. The low end of this energy range is nearly a factor of four below the nominal RHIC injection center of mass energy of 19.6 GeV/u. There are several operational challenges in the low-energy regime, including harmonic number changes, longitudinal acceptance, magnet field quality, lattice control, and luminosity monitoring. We report on the results of beam tests with protons and gold in 2007–9, including first RHIC operations at √{(sNN)=9.2} GeV and low-energy nonlinear field corrections at √{(sNN)=5} GeV.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
Funding: Work supported by Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC02-98CH10886 with the U.S. Department of Energy.
The Booster to AGS (BtA) transfer line was designed to match both ions and protons into the AGS lattice. For proton beam operation the only constraint on the optics is to define a match to the AGS lattice. For ions operation there are constraints introduced by a stripping foil in the upstream part of the transfer line. For polarized proton operation there is the complication that the lattice to match into in the AGS is distorted by the presence of two partial snake magnets. In the 2008 polarized proton run it was observed that there was an optical injection mismatch. Beam experiments were conducted that showed disagreement with the model. In addition, these studies revealed some minor problems with the instrumentation in the line. A new model and more reliable measurements of the transfer line magnet currents have been implemented. Another series of experiments were conducted to test these modifications and to collect a more complete set of data to allow better understanding of the beam dynamics during the transfer and better understanding of the instrumentation. In this paper we will present the results of these experiments and comparison to the new model of the BtA.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
Funding: Work supported by Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC02-98CH10886 with the U.S. Department of Energy.
As part of the efforts to increase polarization and luminosity in RHIC during polarized proton operations we have modified the injection optics and stripping foil geometry in the AGS Booster in order to reduce the emittance growth during H- injection. In this paper we describe the modifications, the injection process, and present results from beam experiments.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
ANL, Argonne
Funding: Work supported by Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC02-98CH10886 with the U.S. Department of Energy.
After installation of two partial snakes in the Brookhaven Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS), a polarized proton beam with 1.5*1011 intensity and 65% polarization has been achieved. There are residual polarization losses due to horizontal resonances over the whole energy ramp and some polarization loss due to vertical intrinsic resonances. Many efforts have been put in to reduce the emittances coming into the AGS and to consequently reduce polarization loss. This paper presents the accelerator setup and preliminary results from run-9 operations.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
Funding: Work supported by Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC02-98CH10886 with the U.S. Department of Energy.
An online modeling system is being developed for the RHIC injector complex, which consists of the Booster, the AGS and the transfer lines connecting the Booster to the AGS and the AGS to RHIC. Historically the injectors have been operated using static values from design specifications or offline model runs, but tighter beam optics constraints required by polarized proton running (e.g. accelerating with near-integer tunes) have necessitated a more dynamic system. An online model server for the AGS has been implemented using MAD-X as the model engine, with plans to extend the system to the Booster and the injector transfer lines and to add the option of calculating optics using the Polymorphic Tracking Code (PTC) as the model engine.