6 Jan 2010
RHIC began the 10th year of operation on 1 Dec 2009. Cool down of the RHIC magnets to 4.5 degrees Kelvin (451 degrees below zero Fahrenheit) was complete by 4 December with beam setup for experiments complete by 31 December. This year we are once again colliding gold beams at full energy - 100 GeV/n x 100 GeV/n to further study the "perfect liquid". The present plan is to devote about 10 weeks to this and then begin a series of gold on gold energy scans. The energy scans will give us an initial search for the so called "critical point" and the "onset of deconfinement"). The energy scans will begin at 31 GeV/n x 31 GeV/n and go as low as 4 GeV/n x 4 GeV/n for physics and machine studies at an even lower energy if time ($'s) permits.. We plan to run until at least late May before shutting down for summer maintenance activities. Both the STAR and PHENIX experiments are operational for this run.
The twentieth round of Radiobiology experiments (NSRL-09C) began in September and ended in November when attention was turned to injector setup for RHIC operations. The next round of NSRL experiments will begin about mid-March, concurrent with RHIC operations. These experiments make use of the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) that uses beams from the Booster Accelerator to study radiation effects for the NASA space program.
Scheduling Physicist web page - FY2010
Status Updates (RHIC Broadcast)
Phil Pile (pile@bnl.gov)