• J. Niedziela, C. Montag, T. Satogata
  BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York

Successful implementation of a beam-based alignment algorithm, tailored to different types of quadrupoles at RHIC, provides significant benefits to machine operations for heavy ions and polarized protons. This algorithm is used to calibrate BPM centers relative to interaction region (IR) quadrupoles to maximize aperture. It is also used to determine the optimal orbit through transition jump quadrupoles to minimize orbit changes during the transition jump for heavy ion acceleration. This paper provides background discussion and results from first application during the RHIC 2005 run.

• P. Cameron, I. Ben-Zvi, W.C. Dawson, J. Kewisch, V. Litvinenko, Y. Luo, W.W. MacKay, C. Montag, J. Niedziela, V. Ptitsyn, T. Satogata, C. Schultheiss, V. Yakimenko
  BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York

Accurate alignment of the electron and ion beams in the RHIC electron cooling solenoids is crucial for well-optimized cooling. Because of the greatly differing rigidities of the electron and ion beams, to achieve the specified alignment accuracy it is required that transverse magnetic fields resulting from imperfections in solenoid fabrication be down by five orders of magnitude relative to the pure solenoid fields. Shimming the solenoid field to this accuracy might be accomplished by survey techniques prior to operation with beam, or by methods of beam-based alignment. We report on the details of a method of beam-based alignment, as well as the results of preliminary measurements with the ion beam at RHIC