14 Mar 2008
RHIC Run 8 was completed on 12 March. The run began on 1 November 2007. Once the rings were at liquid helium temperature (4 degrees Kelvin) and tuned-up with beam, a 9 week physics program using 100 x 100 GeV/n deuteron-gold collisions was completed. This was the second year (the first was in 2003) of operation of RHIC with deuteron-gold beams. The luminosity delivered to the STAR and PHENIX experiments in Run 8 was about a factor of ten higher than delivered in 2003. The experiments met or exceeded their goals. One of the physics goals of this deuteron-gold run is to provide a high statistics "cold" nuclear matter data set to establish a definitive baseline for "hot" nuclear matter, gold-gold collisions. Another goal is to shed light on the so-called "Color Glass Condensate". A 100 x 100 GeV polarized-proton run followed the deuteron-gold run. The original RHIC operations plan called for about 15 weeks of RHIC operation with polarized protons, however the budget approved by Congress came in well below the Presidential budget request and was not sufficient to support our plans. The polarized proton run was then reduced to only 6 weeks. Needless to say the experiments did not meet their all of their goals. The last two days of the run were devoted to low energy gold-gold development. This was successful as both STAR and PHENIX were able to collect limited physics data with 4.6 x 4.6 GeV/n gold-gold collisions. The final hours were spent at an even lower energy, 2.5 x 2.5 GeV/n gold-gold. Although no collisions were established, we were able to characterize the beams for study off-line. Once low energy gold-gold collisions are established with sufficient luminosity, the search for a possible QCD critical point in the nuclear matter phase diagram can begin. The next RHIC run (Run 9) is planned to start in November 2008, budget permitting. The beam species will be decided later this year. Both the STAR and PHENIX experiments will once again be operational for this run.
The fifteenth round of Radiobiology experiments (NSRL-08A) began on 3 March and will continue into May and will be immediately followed by NSRL-08B. These experiments make use of the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) that uses beams from the Booster synchrotron to study radiation effects for the NASA space program.
Scheduling Physicist web page - FY2008
Status Updates (RHIC Broadcast)
Phil Pile (pile@bnl.gov)