Polarized protons and RHIC. Based on a presentation to the Brookhaven PAC in August 1991
RHIC, the heavy ion collider being built at Brookhaven, offers an exciting opportunity to collide highly polarized protons at high energy and luminosity. This new facility would combine the existing AGS polarized proton capability with the new Booster/Accumulator and spin rotators to achieve collisions between intense beams of polarized protons at a collision energy of 500 GeV. At this energy and the expected luminosity of 2 {times} 10{sup 32} cm{sup 2}/second physics probes will include high P{sub T} jets, direct photons, Drell-Yan, W{sup {plus_minus}}, and heavy quarks. The accessible physics includes study of the spin content of the proton, particularly gluon and antiquark polarization, study of large PQCD-predicted asymmetries for parton-parton subprocesses, and parity violation studies and searches. The proton spin direction at a RHIC crossing can be longitudinal or transverse and can alternate bunch-to-bunch giving exquisite control of systematic errors. At RHIC double spin experiments can be done with pure beams and the energy and luminosity open a new domain for probing the physics of spin. An international collaboration is forming which proposes to exploit the unique physics available from a polarized RHIC. Important steps, leading to a polarized RHIC, have been taken. The AGS has already accelerated polarized protons. A new Booster/Accumulator has been commissioned. A beautiful series of machine experiments at Indian University have verified that spin rotators indeed remove spin resonance behavior, which is the key to achieving polarized proton acceleration to high energy. E880, an accelerator experiment which will build, install, and test a Siberian Snake in the AGS, was approved by the Brookhaven PAC in August 1991. The snake will be installed in the AGS in the summer of 1993. RHIC construction has started, with heavy ion experiments to begin in 1997.
- Research Organization:
- Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-76CH00016
- OSTI ID:
- 10120504
- Report Number(s):
- BNL-47065; ON: DE92007144
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: Dec 1991
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Polarized protons at RHIC
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