BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
CERN, Geneva
Tune feedback was first implemented in RHIC in 2002 as a specialist activity. The transition to full operational status was impeded by dynamic range problems, as well as by overall loop instabilities driven by large coupling. The dynamic range problem was solved by the CERN development of the Direct Diode Detection Analog Front End. Continuous measurement of all projections of the betatron Eigenmodes made possible the world's first implementation of coupling feedback during beam acceleration, resolving the problem of overall loop instabilites. Simultaneous tune and coupling feedbacks were utilized as specialist activities for ramp development during the 2006 RHIC run. At the beginning of the 2007 RHIC run there remained two obstacles to making these feedbacks fully operational in RHIC - chromaticity measurement and control, and the presence of strong harmonics of the power line frequency in the betatron spectrum. We report here on progress in tune, coupling, and chromaticity measurement and feedback, and discuss the relevance of our results to the LHC commissioning effort. The results of investigations of power line harmonics in RHIC are presented elsewhere in these proceedings.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
After the last successful RHIC Au-Au run in 2004 (Run-4), RHIC experiments now require significantly enhanced luminosity to study very rare events in heavy ion collisions. RHIC has demonstrated its capability to operate routinely above its design average luminosity per store of 2x1026 cm-2 s-1. In Run-4 we already achieved 2.5 times the design luminosity in RHIC. This luminosity was achieved with only 40% of bunches filled, and with β* = 1 m. However, the goal is to reach 4 times the design luminosity, 8x1026 cm-2 s-1, by reducing the beta* value and increasing the number of bunches to the accelerator maximum of 111. In addition, the average time in store should be increased by a factor of 1.1 to about 60% of calendar time. We present an overview of the changes that increased the instantaneous luminosity and luminosity lifetime, raised the reliability, and improved the operational efficiency of RHIC Au-Au operations during Run-7.
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
ITEP, Moscow
The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider~(RHIC) as the first high energy polarized proton collider was designed to provide polarized proton collisions at a maximum beam energy of 250GeV. It has been providing collisions at a beam energy of 100GeV since 2001. Equipped with two full Siberian snakes in each ring, polarization is preserved during the acceleration from injection to 100GeV with careful control of the betatron tunes and the vertical orbit distortions. However, the intrinsic spin resonances beyond 100GeV are about a factor of two stronger than those below 100GeV making it important to examine the impact of these strong intrinsic spin resonances on polarization survival and the tolerance for vertical orbit distortions. Polarized protons were accelerated to the record energy of 250GeV in RHIC with a polarization of 45\% measured at top energy in 2006. The polarization measurement as a function of beam energy also shows some polarization loss around 136GeV, the first strong intrinsic resonance above 100GeV. This paper presents the results and discusses the sensitivity of the polarization survival to orbit distortions.