RHIC provided Au+Au collisions at beam energies of 5.75 and 4.59 GeV/nucleon for the physics program in 2020 as part of the Beam Energy Scan II experiment. The machine configuration and operational experience at these energies are presented in this report with emphasis on their unique features which include but are not limited to the addition of a second RF system to enable large longitudinal acceptance and to reduce the intrabeam scattering rate at 5.75 GeV/nucleon, the exploration of the tune space for better performance, the use of lower frequency cavities for alleviating space charge effects, and the world-first operation of cooling on colliding beams with an RF-accelerated bunched electron beam.

As part of the Beam Energy Scan phase-II (BES-II) program, RHIC operated in the fixed target mode with Gold beam at energies 5.75, 7.3, 9.8, 13.5, 19.5 and 31.2 GeV/nucleon in 2020. The gold beams at these energies were moved vertically to scrape the halo on a gold fixed target. In addition to beam orbit control, tune and chromaticity adjustments and external excitation were used to produce and maintain the event rate. This paper will review the operational experience of RHIC in the fixed target mode at various energies in 2020.

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 with processing from RIKEN, while Ru-96 was provided by a new enrichment facility under commissioning at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

RHIC operated in fixed target mode at beam energies 4.59, 7.3, and 31.2 GeV in 2019 as a part of the Beam Energy Scan II program. To scrape beam halo effectively at the fixed target which is 2.05 m away from the center of the STAR detectors, lattice design with relative large beta function at STAR was implemented at the two lower energies. The kickers of the baseband tune (BBQ) measurement system were engaged to dilute the beam transversely to maintain the event rate except for 31.2 GeV/nucleon. In addition, beam orbit control and/or tune chromticity adjustment were used to level the event rate. This paper will review the operational experience of RHIC in fixed target mode at various energies.

The FY18 RHIC physics program calls for Ru-Ru and Zr-Zr collisions at 100GeV using isobaric Ruthenium and Zirconium ions, each having 96 nucleons. In the injector chain, these two ions must come from Tandem and EBIS source, respectively. To reduce systematic errors in the detector, the luminosity for the two species is matched as closely as possible, and the species are switched frequently. Several bunch merges are needed in the Booster and AGS to reach the desired bunch intensity for RHIC. The setup and performance of injector chain with these ions are reviewed.

The imperfection and vertical intrinsic depolarizing resonancesin the Brookhaven AGS have been overcome by the two partial Siberian snakes in the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS). The relatively weak but numerous horizontal resonances are overcome by a pair of horizontal tune jump quads. 70% proton polarization has been achieved for 2.1E11 bunch intensity. Further gain can come from maintaining smaller transverse emittance with same beam intensity. The main efforts now are to reduce the transverse emittance in the AGS and Booster, as well as robust jump quads timing generation scheme. This paper summarizes the operation results in the injectors.

The polarized proton beam is injected into the booster via the charge-exchange (H- to H+) scheme. The emittance growth due to scattering at the stripping foil is proportional to the beta functions at the foil. It was demonstrated that the current scheme of reducing the beta functions at the stripping foil preserves the emittance better; however the betatron tunes are above but very close to half integer. Due to concern of space charge and half integer in general, options of lattice designs aimed towards reducing the beta functions at the stripping foil with tunes at more favorable places are explored.

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) operation as the polarized proton collider presents unique challenges since both luminosity(L) and spin polarization(P) are important. With longitudinally polarized beams at the experiments, the figure of merit is LP{sup 4}. A lot of upgrades and modifications have been made since last polarized proton operation. A 9 MHz rf system is installed to improve longitudinal match at injection and to increase luminosity. The beam dump was upgraded to increase bunch intensity. A vertical survey of RHIC was performed before the run to get better magnet alignment. The orbit control is also improved this year. Additional efforts are put in to improve source polarization and AGS polarization transfer efficiency. To preserve polarization on the ramp, a new working point is chosen such that the vertical tune is near a third order resonance. The overview of the changes and the operation results are presented in this paper. Siberian snakes are essential tools to preserve polarization when accelerating polarized beams to higher energy. At the same time, the higher order resonances still can cause polarization loss. As seen in RHIC, the betatron tune has to be carefully set and maintained on the ramp and during the store to avoid polarization loss. In addition, the orbit control is also critical to preserve polarization. The higher polarization during this run comes from several improvements over last run. First we have a much better orbit on the ramp. The orbit feedback brings down the vertical rms orbit error to 0.1mm, much better than the 0.5mm last run. With correct BPM offset and vertical realignment, this rms orbit error is indeed small. Second, the jump quads in the AGS improved input polarization for RHIC. Third, the vertical tune was pushed further away from 7/10 snake resonance. The tune feedback maintained the tune at the desired value through the ramp. To calibrate the analyzing power of RHIC polarimeters at any energy above injection, the polarized hydrogen jet target runs for every fill with both beams. Based on the known analyzing power, there is very little polarization loss between injection and 100 GeV. An alternative way is to measure the asymmetry at 100 GeV followed by ramping up to 250 GeV and back down to 100 GeV and then to measure the asymmetry again at 100 GeV. If the asymmetry after the down ramp is similar to the measurement before the up ramp, polarization was also preserved during the ramp to 250 GeV. The analyzing power at storage energy can then be extracted from the asymmetries measured at 100 GeV and 250 GeV. The tune and orbit feedbacks are essential for the down ramp to be possible. The polarized proton operation is still going on. We will push bunch intensity higher until reaching the beam-beam limit. The even higher intensity will have to wait for the electron lenses to compensate the beam-beam effect. To understand the details of spin dynamics in RHIC with two snakes, spin simulation with the real magnet fields have been developed recently. The study will provide guidance for possible polarization loss schemes. Further polarization gain will requires a polarized source upgrade; more careful setup jump quads in the AGS to get full benefit; and control emittance in the whole accelerator chain.

Since 2012, gold and all other ions for the RHIC injector chain have been provided by an Electron-Beam Ion Source (EBIS). The source is followed by an RFQ, a short Linac, and a 30 m transport line. These components replace the Tandem van de Graaff and associated 840 m transport line. They provide ions at 2 MeV per nucleon (kinetic energy) for injection into the AGS Booster. The setup and performance of Booster and AGS with gold and other ions from the new source are reviewed.

To study low-x shadowing/saturation physics as well as other nuclear effects [1], [2], proton-gold (p-Au, for 5 weeks) and proton-Aluminum (p-Al, for 2 weeks) collisions were provided for experiments in 2015 at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), with polarized proton beam in the Blue ring and Au/Al beam in the Yellow ring. The special features of the asymmetric run in 2015 will be introduced. The operation experience will be reviewed as well in the report.

The first part of RHIC Run 15 consisted of ten weeks of polarized proton on proton collisions at a beam energy of 100 GeV at two interaction points. In this paper we discuss several of the upgrades to the collider complex that allowed for improved performance. The largest effort consisted in commissioning of the electron lenses, one in each ring, which are designed to compensate one of the two beam-beam interactions experienced by the proton bunches. The e-lenses raise the per bunch intensity at which luminosity becomes beam-beam limited. A new lattice was designed to create the phase advances necessary for a beam-beam compensation with the e-lens, which also has an improved off-momentum dynamic aperture relative to previous runs. In order to take advantage of the new, higher intensity limit without suffering intensity driven emittance deterioration, other features were commissioned including a continuous transverse bunch-by-bunch damper in RHIC and a double harmonic RF cature scheme in the Booster. Other high intensity protections include improvements to the abort system and the installation of masks to intercept beam lost due to abort kicker pre-fires.

As the last step of phase 1 of the beam energy scan (BESI), aimed at the search for the critical point in the QCD phase diagram, RHIC collided gold ions at a beam energy of 7.3 GeV/nucleon during the FY 2014 run. While this particular energy is close to the nominal RHIC injection energy of 9.8 GeV/nucleon, it is nevertheless challenging because it happens to be close to the AGS transition energy, which makes longitudinal beam dynamics during transfer from the AGS to RHIC difficult. We report on machine performance, obstacles and solutions during the FY 2014 low energy run.

Imperfection and vertical intrinsic depolarizing resonances have been overcome by the two partial Siberian snakes in the Alternative Gradient Synchrotron(AGS). The relatively weak but numerous horizontal resonances are the main source of polarization loss in the AGS. A pair of horizontal quads have been used to overcome these weak resonances. This technique needs very accurate jump timing. The keys for the system are the accurate control of the jump quad timing and the elimination of any emittance growth. Fast rollover magnet cycle has been used and it improves the horizontal tune jump quads setup. Recent experimental results including jump quad timing and emittance preservation are presented in this paper.

Imperfection and vertical intrinsic depolarizing resonances have been overcome by the two partial Siberian snakes in the Alternative Gradient Synchrotron(AGS). The relatively weak but numerous horizontal resonances are the main source of polarization loss in the AGS. A pair of horizontal tune jump quads have been used to overcome these weak resonances. The locations of the two quads have to be chosen such that the disturbance to the beam optics is minimum. The emittance growth has to be mitigated for this method to work. In addition, this technique needs very accurate jump timing. Using two partial Siberian snakes, with vertical tune inside the spin tune gap and 80% polarization at AGS injection, polarized proton beam had reached [Formula: see text] proton per bunch with 65% polarization. With the tune jump timing optimized and emittance preserved, more than 70% polarization with 2[Formula: see text] protons per bunch has been achieved.

To search for the critical point in the QCD phase diagram, RHIC needs to operate at a set of low gold beam energies between 2.5 and 20 GeV per nucleon. During run 12, first successful collider operation at the lowest energy of 2.5 GeV per nucleon was achieved. We present the challenges and achieved results, and discuss possible future upgrades and improvements.

In the 2012 RHIC heavy ion run, we collided uraniumuranium (U-U) ions at 96.4 GeV/nucleon and copper-gold (Cu-Au) ions at 100 GeV/nucleon for the first time in RHIC. The new Electron-Beam Ion Source (EBIS) was used for the first time to provide ions for the RHIC physics program. After adding the horizontal cooling, 3-D stochastic cooling became operational in RHIC for the first time, which greatly enhanced the luminosity. With a double bunch merging technique in the Booster and AGS, the bunch intensities of Cu and Au ions in RHIC surpassed their projections. Both PHENIX and STAR detectors reached their integrated luminosity goals for both U-U and Cu-Au collisions. In this article we review the machine improvements and performances in this run.

The NSLS-II linac is a 200 MeV normal conducting linac procured as a turnkey system from RI Research Instruments, GmbH. The linac and associated transport lines were installed at BNL in the winter of 2012. Commissioning activities started March 26, 2012 and lasted for 2.5 months. In this report we discuss the commissioning results of the linac and issues encountered.

As the world’s only high energy polarized proton collider, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) has been providing collisions of polarized proton beams at beam energy from 100 GeV to 255 GeV for the past decade to explore the proton spin structure as well as other spin dependent measurements. With the help of two Siberian Snakes per accelerator plus outstanding beam control, beam polarization is preserved up to 100 GeV. About 10% polarization loss has been observed during the acceleration between 100 GeV and 255 GeV due to several strong depolarizing resonances. Moderate polarization loss was also observed during a typical 8 hour physics store. This presentation will give an overview the achieved performance of RHIC, both polarization as well as luminosity. The plan for providing high energy polarized He-3 collisions at RHIC will also be covered.