BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
RHIC operation as the polarized proton collider presents unique challenges since both luminosity and spin polarization are important. With longitudinally polarized beams at the experiments, the figure of merit is LP4. A lot of upgrades and modifications have been made since last polarized proton operation. A 9 MHz rf system has been installed to improve longitudinal match at injection and to increase luminosity. The beam dumps were upgraded to allow for increased bunch intensities. A vertical survey of RHIC was performed before the run to get better magnet alignment. The orbit control has also been improved this year. Additional efforts were put in to improve source polarization and AGS polarization transfer efficiency. To preserve polarization on the ramp, a new working point was chosen such that the vertical tune is near a third order resonance. The overview of the changes and the operation results are presented in this paper.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
In 2009 a beam-energy monitor was installed in the high energy beam transport (HEBT) line at the Brookhaven National Lab linac. This device measures the energies of electrons stripped from the 40mA H− beam by background gas. Electrons are stripped by the 1.7x10-7torr residual gas at a rate of ~2.4x10-8/cm. Since beam electrons have the same velocities as beam protons, the beam proton energy is deduced by multiplying the electron energy by mp/me=1836. A 183.6MeV H− beam produces 100keV electrons. In 2010 we installed an optics plates containing a laser and optics to add beam-profile measurement capability via photodetachment. Our 100mJ/pulse, Q-switched laser neutralizes 70% of the beam during its 10ns pulse. The chamber in which the laser light passes through the ion beam is upstream of a dipole magnet which deflects the electrons into a biased retarding-grid (V<125kV) Faraday-cup detector. To measure beam profiles, a narrow laser beam is stepped across the ion beam removing electrons from the portion of the H− beam intercepted by the laser. The laser also gives us energy measurements on the 0.2mA polarized proton beam.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
In order to correct beam perturbations in RHIC around 10Hz, a new fast data distribution network was required to deliver BPM position data at rates several orders of magnitude above the capability of the existing system. The urgency of the project limited the amount of custom hardware that could be developed, which dictated the use of as much commercially available equipment as possible. The selected architecture uses a custom hardware interface to the existing RHIC BPM electronics together with commercially available Gigabit Ethernet switches to distribute position data to devices located around the collider ring. Using the minimum Ethernet packet size and a field programmable gate array (FPGA) based state machine logic instead of a software based driver, real-time and deterministic data delivery is possible using Ethernet. The method of adapting this protocol for low latency data delivery, bench testing of Ethernet hardware, and the logic to construct Ethernet packets using FPGA hardware will be discussed.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
Vibrations of the cryogenic triplet magnets at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) are suspected to be causing the beam perturbations observed at frequencies around 10 Hz. Several solutions to counteract the effect have been considered in the past, including reinforcing the magnet base support assembly, a mechanical servo feedback system, and a local beam feedback system at each of the two experimental areas. However, implementation of the mechanical solutions would be expensive, and the local feedback system was insufficient since perturbation amplitudes outside the experimental areas were still problematic. A global 10 Hz orbit feedback system is currently under development at RHIC consisting of 36 beam position monitors (BPMs) and 12 small dedicated dipole corrector magnets in each of the two counter-rotating rings. A subset of the system consisting of 8 BPMs and 4 corrector magnets in each ring was installed and successfully tested during the RHIC 2010 run; and the complete system is being installed for the 2011 run. A description of the overall system architecture and results with beam will be discussed.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
JLAB, Newport News, Virginia, USA
All physics stores at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider are now established using simultaneous orbit, tune, coupling, and energy feedback during beam injection, acceleration to full beam energies, during the “beta-squeeze” for establishing small beam sizes at the interaction points, and during removal of separation bumps to establish collisions. In this report we describe the major changes made to enable these achievements. The proof-of-principle for additional chromaticity feedback will also be presented.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
To reduce the effect of trajectory perturbations due to vibrations of the final focusing quadrupoles at RHIC, global orbit feedback was successfully prototyped during run-10. The system was tested using transfer functions between the beam position monitors and correctors obtained from the online optical model and a correction algorithm based on singular value decomposition (SVD). In run-11 we plan to self-calibrate the system using SVD matrices derived from orbit response matrix (ORM) measurements acquired real-time using the new FPGA-based signal processing. Comparisons between measurement and model and of feedback performance with the two methods are presented.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
The recently completed RHIC fast global orbit feedback system uses 24 small “window-frame” horizontal dipole correctors. Space limitations dictated a very compact design. The magnetic design and modelling of these laminated yoke magnets is described as well as the mechanical implementation, coil winding, vacuum impregnation, etc. Test procedures to determine the field quality and frequency response are described. The results of these measurements are presented and discussed. A small fringe field from each magnet, overlapping the opposite RHIC ring, is compensated by a correction winding placed on the opposite ring’s magnet and connected in series with the main winding of the first one. Results from measurements of this compensation scheme are shown and discussed.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
As part of the search for a phase transition or critical point on the QCD phase diagram, an energy scan including 5 different energy settings was performed during the 2010 RHIC heavy ion run. While the top beam energy for heavy ions is at 100 GeV/n and the lowest achieved energy setpoint was significantly below RHICs injection energy of approximately 10 GeV/n, we also provided beams for data taking in a medium energy range above injection energy and below top beam energy. This paper reviews RHIC experience and challenges for RHIC medium energy operations that produced full experimental data sets at beam energies of 31.2 GeV/n and 19.5 GeV/n.