Three-dimensional stochastic cooling of 100  GeV/nucleon gold beams has been achieved in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). We discuss the physics and technology of the cooling systems and present results with a beam. A factor of 2 increase in luminosity was achieved and another factor of 2 is expected.

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High-bunch-charge photoemission electron-sources operating in a continuous wave (CW) mode are required for many advanced applications of particle accelerators, such as electron coolers for hadron beams, electronion colliders, and free-electron lasers (FELs). Superconducting RF (SRF) has several advantages over other electron-gun technologies in CW mode as it offers higher acceleration rate and potentially can generate higher bunch charges and average beam currents. A 112 MHz SRF electron photoinjector (gun) was developed at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) to produce high-brightness and high-bunch-charge bunches for the Coherent electron Cooling Proof-of-Principle (CeC PoP) experiment. The gun utilizes a quarter-wave resonator (QWR) geometry for assuring beam dynamics, and uses high quantum efficiency (QE) multi-alkali photocathodes for generating electrons.

Cooling of beams of gold ions using electron bunches accelerated with radio-frequency (RF) systems was recently experimentally demonstrated in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). Such an approach is new and opens the possibility of using this technique at higher energies than possible with electrostatic acceleration of electron beams. The challenges of this approach include generation of electron beams suitable for cooling, delivery of electron bunches of the required quality to the cooling sections without degradation of beam angular divergence and energy spread, achieving the required small angles between electron and ion trajectories in the cooling sections, precise velocity matching between the two beams, high-current operation of the electron accelerator, as well as several physics effects related to bunched-beam cooling. Here we report on the first demonstration of cooling hadron beams using this new approach.

The Low Energy RHIC electron Cooling (LEReC) project at Brookhaven National Laboratory recently demonstrated for the first time cooling of hadron bunches with radio-frequency (rf) accelerated electron bunches. LEReC uses a high-voltage photoemission electron gun with stringent requirements for beam current, beam quality, and stability. The electron gun has a photocathode with a high-power fiber laser, and a novel cathode production, transport, and exchange system. It has been demonstrated that the high-voltage photoemission gun can continually produce a high-current electron beam with a beam quality suitable for electron cooling. We describe the operational experience with the LEReC dc photoemission gun in RHIC and discuss the important aspects needed to achieve the required beam current, beam quality, and stability.

A high-current high-brightness electron accelerator for low-energy RHIC electron cooling (LEReC) was successfully commissioned at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The LEReC accelerator includes a dc photoemission gun, a laser system, a photocathode delivery system, magnets, beam diagnostics, a superconducting rf booster cavity, and a set of normal conducting rf cavities to provide enough flexibility to tune the beam in the longitudinal phase space. Cooling with nonmagnetized rf accelerated electron beams requires longitudinal corrections to obtain a small momentum spread while preserving the transverse emittances. Electron beams with kinetic energies of 1.6 and 2.0 MeV with a beam quality suitable for cooling were successfully propagated through 100 m of beam lines, including dispersion sections, maintained through both cooling sections in RHIC and used for cooling ions in both RHIC rings simultaneously. The beam quality suitable for cooling RHIC beams was achieved in 2018, which led to the first experimental demonstration of bunched beam electron cooling of hadron beams in 2019.

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.

Precision measurement and control of the betatron tunes and betatron coupling in RHIC are required for establishing and maintaining both good operating conditions and, particularly during the ramp to high beam energies, high proton beam polarization. While the proof-of-principle for simultaneous tune and coupling feedback was successfully demonstrated earlier, routine application of these systems has only become possible recently. Following numerous modifications for improved measurement resolution and feedback control, the time required to establish full-energy beams with the betatron tunes and coupling regulated by feedback was reduced from several weeks to a few hours. A summary of these improvements, select measurements benefitting from the improved resolution and a review of system performance are the subject of this report.