ERHIC in Electron-Ion Operation

Abstract

The design effort for the electron-ion collider eRHIC has concentrated on electron-proton collisions at the highest luminosities over the widest possible energy range. The present design also provides for electron-nucleon peak luminosities of up to 4.7·10³³ cm⁻²s^{−1} with strong hadron cooling, and up to 1.7·10³³ cm⁻²s^{−1} with stochastic cooling. Here we discuss the performance limitations and design choices for electron-ion collisions that are different from the electron-proton collisions. These include the ion bunch preparation in the injector chain, acceleration and intrabeam scattering in the hadron ring, path length adjustment and synchronization with the electron ring, stochastic cooling upgrades, machine protection upgrades, and operation with polarized electron beams colliding with either unpolarized ion beams or polarized He-3.