Accelerating Polarized Protons to High Energy
- Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973 (United States)
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.
- OSTI ID:
- 21061885
- Journal Information:
- AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 915, Issue 1; Conference: 17. international spin physics symposium, Kyoto (Japan), 2-7 Oct 2006; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.2750736; (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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