RHIC polarized proton status and plan

Abstract

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) as the first high energy polarized proton collider has been providing collisions at a beam energy of 100 GeV since 2001. Equipped with two full Siberian snakes in each ring, polarization is preserved during the acceleration from injection to 100 GeV with careful control of the betatron tunes and the vertical orbit distortions. In the latest RHIC polarized proton run in 2006, a peak luminosity of 28 × 1030cm−2 s−1 with 60% average polarization at store was achieved. During the run, RHIC also demonstrated its capability in providing a combination of polarized proton collisions with longitudinal polarization and radial polarization were provided to the STAR experiment and PHENIX experiment with the local spin rotators installed on either side of the STAR detector and PHENIX detector. Polarized protons were also first accelerated to 250 GeV at the end of RHIC 2006 run with a 46% polarization measured at this new store energy in one of the RHIC accelerators. Currently, the luminosity in RHIC is limited by the beam-beam effect. The plan is to triple the luminosity. Plans to achieve polarized proton collision at 250 GeV are also reported.