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.
In preparation for the RHIC polarized proton run 2009, simulations were carried out to evaluate the million turn dynamic apertures for different beta*s at the proposed beam energies of 100 GeV and 250 GeV. One goal of this study is to find out the best beta* for this run. We also evaluated the effects of the second order chromaticity correction. The second order chromaticties can be corrected with the MAD8 Harmon module or by correcting the horizontal and vertical half-integer resonance driving terms.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
CERN, Geneva
Funding: Work supported by Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC02-98CH10886 with the U.S. Department of Energy.
In the article we review the nonlinear beam dynamics from nonlinear magnetic fields in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The nonlinear magnetic fields include the magnetic field errors in the interaction regions, chromatic sextupoles, and sextupole component from arc dipoles. Their effects on the beam dynamics and long-term dynamic apertures are evaluated. The online measurement and correction methods for the IR nonlinear errors, nonlinear chromaticity, and horizontal third order resonance are reviewed. The overall strategy for the nonlinear effect correction in the RHIC is discussed.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
The reduction of beta* beyond the 1m design value at RHIC has been consistently achieved over the last 6 years of RHIC operations, resulting in an increase of luminosity for different running modes and species. During the recent 2007-08 deuteron-gold run the reduction to 0.70 from the design 1 m achieved a 30% increase in delivered luminosity. The key ingredients in allowing the reduction have been the capability of efficiently developing ramps with tune and coupling feedback, orbit corrections on the ramp, and collimation at injection and on the ramp, to minimize beam losses in the final focus triplets, the main aperture limitation for the collision optics. We will describe the operational strategy used to reduce the b*, at first squeezing the beam at store, to test feasibility, followed by the operationally preferred option of squeezing the beam during acceleration, and the resulting luminosity increase obtained in the Cu-Cu run in 2005, Au-Au in 2007 and the deuteron-Au run in 2007-08. We will also include beta squeeze plans and results for the upcoming 2009 run with polarized protons at 250 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.
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
MIT, Middleton, Massachusetts
Funding: Work performed under US DOE contract DE-AC02-98CH1-886
Design of a medium energy electron-ion collider (MEeIC) is under development at Collider-Accelerator Department, BNL. The design envisions a construction of 4 GeV electron accelerator in a local area inside the RHIC tunnel. The electrons will be produced by a polarized electron source and accelerated in the energy recovery linac. Collisions of the electron beam with 100 GeV/u heavy ions or with 250 GeV polarized protons will be arranged in the existing IP2 interaction region of RHIC. The luminosity of electron-proton collisions at 1032 cm-2 s-1 level will be achieved with 40 mA CW electron current with presently available parameters of the proton beam. Efficient cooling of proton beam at the collision energy may bring the luminosity to 1033 cm-2 s-1 level. The important feature of the MEeIC is that it would serve as first stage of eRHIC, a future electron-ion collider at BNL with both higher luminosity and energy reach. The majority of the MEeIC accelerator components will be used for eRHIC.
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 proton polarization measurements in AGS and RHIC are based on proton-carbon and proton-proton elastic scattering in the Coulomb Nuclear Interference region. Polarimeter operation in the scanning mode gives polarization profiles and beam intensity profile measurements. This polarimeter is an ideal wire-scanner due to: extremely good signal/noise ratio and high counting rate, which allows accurate bunch by bunch emittance measurements during 100 ms time of the beam crossing. The measurements of the beam emittance in both vertical and horizontal planes will be possible after polarimeter upgrade for the 2009 polarized run. Two new vacuum chambers and two target motion mechanisms and detectors assembly will be installed in each ring. One polarimeter can be used for the vertical polarization and intensity profile measurements and the second can be used for the horizontal profile measurements. The absolute accuracy limitations and cross-calibration of different techniques will be also discussed.
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.