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[PAST EVENT] Physics Colloquium - James Maxwell (MIT/JLAB)
November 13, 2015
4pm - 5pm
Abstract:
Spin polarization of targets and beams has been a crucial tool in scattering experiment probes of nuclear structure. While the properties of the proton have allowed successful polarized proton targets and beams, neutrons are more difficult to manipulate in a particle accelerator beam. Fortunately, other materials, such as 3He, offer surrogates of the neutron to allow the creation of “effective” neutron beams to allow the study of neutron in an accelerator. We are developing a beam source of polarized 3He ions for use at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Lab (BNL), and at the proposed Electron Ion Collider. This source combines two existing technologies to create polarized ions which can be injected into a beamline: the technique of metastability exchange optical pumping (MEOP) is a decades old process allowing the polarization of 3He via laser pumping at low pressure in a small magnetic field; and the electron beam ion source (EBIS) currently in use at BNL can ionize and extract nearly any gas for injection into RHIC. A successful polarized 3He beam which would become a cornerstone of neutron study at RHIC and at a future electron-ion collider facility.
Spin polarization of targets and beams has been a crucial tool in scattering experiment probes of nuclear structure. While the properties of the proton have allowed successful polarized proton targets and beams, neutrons are more difficult to manipulate in a particle accelerator beam. Fortunately, other materials, such as 3He, offer surrogates of the neutron to allow the creation of “effective” neutron beams to allow the study of neutron in an accelerator. We are developing a beam source of polarized 3He ions for use at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Lab (BNL), and at the proposed Electron Ion Collider. This source combines two existing technologies to create polarized ions which can be injected into a beamline: the technique of metastability exchange optical pumping (MEOP) is a decades old process allowing the polarization of 3He via laser pumping at low pressure in a small magnetic field; and the electron beam ion source (EBIS) currently in use at BNL can ionize and extract nearly any gas for injection into RHIC. A successful polarized 3He beam which would become a cornerstone of neutron study at RHIC and at a future electron-ion collider facility.