BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
Precedent to electron cooling commissioning and collisions of Gold at various energies at RHIC in 2018, the STAR experiment desired an exploration of the chiral magnetic effect in the quark gluon plasma (QGP) with an isobar run, utilizing Ruthenium and Zirconium. Colliding Zr-96 with Zr-96 and Ru-96 with Ru-96 create the same QGP but in a different magnetic field due to the different charges of the Zr (Z=40) and Ru (Z=44) ions. Since the charge difference is only 10%, the experimental program requires exacting store conditions for both ions. These systematic error concerns presented new challenges for the Collider, including frequent reconfiguration of the Collider for the different ion species, and maintaining level amounts of instantaneous and integrated luminosity between two species. Moreover, making beams of Zr-96 and Ru-96 is challenging since the natural abundances of these isotopes are low. Creating viable enriched source material for Zr-96 required assistance processing from RIKEN, while Ru-96 was provided by a new enrichment facility under commissioning at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
Fermilab, Batavia, Illinois, USA
FRIB, East Lansing, Michigan, USA
The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) is being envisioned as the next facility to be constructed by the DOE Nuclear Physics program. Brookhaven National Laboratory is proposing eRHIC, a facility based on the existing RHIC complex as a cost effective realization of the EIC project with a peak luminosity of 1034 cm-2 sec-1. An electron storage ring with an energy range from 5 to 18 GeV will be added in the existing RHIC tunnel. A spin-transparent rapid-cycling synchrotron (RCS) will serve as a full-energy polarized electron injector. Recent design improvements include reduction of the IR magnet strengths to avoid the necessity for Nb3Sn magnets, and a novel hadron injection scheme to maximize the integrated luminosity. We will provide an overview of this proposed project and present the current design status.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
The QCD (Quantum Chromodynamics) phase diagram has many uncharted territories, particularly the nature of the transformation from Quark-Gluon plasma (QGP) to the state of Hadronic gas. The Beam Energy Scan I (BES-I) at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) was completed but measurements had large statistical errors. To improve the statistical error and expand the search for first-order phase transition and location of the critical point, Beam Energy Scan II will commence in 2019 with a goal of improving the luminosity by a factor of 3-4. The beam lifetime at low energies was and will be limited by some physical effects of which the most significant are intrabeam scattering, space charge, beam-beam, persistent current effects. This article will review these potential limiting factors and introduce the countermeasures which will be in place to improve BES-II luminosity.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
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.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
The brand new non-magnetized bunched beam electron cooler (LEReC) [1] has been built to provide luminosity improvement for Beam Energy Scan II (BES-II) physics program at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) BES-II [2]. The LEReC accelerator includes a photocathode DC gun, a laser system, a photocathode delivery system, magnets, beam diagnostics, a SRF booster cavity, and a set of Normal Conducting RF cavities to provide sufficient flexibility to tune the beam in the longitudinal phase space. This high-current high-power accelerator was successfully commissioned in period of March -September 2018. Beam quality suitable for cooling has been demonstrated. In this paper we discuss beam commissioning results and experience learned during commissioning.
[1] A. Fedotov et al., ’Status of bunched beam electron cooler LEReC’ in these proceedings.
[2] C.Liu et al., ’Improving luminosity of Beam Energy Scan II at RHIC’ in these proceedings.