RHIC Physics

RHIC was the first machine in the world capable of colliding ions as heavy as gold.

The Spin Puzzle

RHIC collided beams of polarized protons to investigate the "missing" spin of the proton.

Accelerator Science

Before high-speed packets of protons or ions could be brought into collisions at RHIC, they first traveled through a chain of smaller particle accelerators.

An Educational Pipeline

Large-scale physics facilities like RHIC play a significant role in training the next generation of physicists.

STAR Detector

The Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC, known as STAR, tracks the thousands of particles produced by ion collisions at RHIC. STAR is used to search for signatures of the form of matter that RHIC was designed to create: the quark-gluon plasma.

sPHENIX Detector

sPHENIX is a radical makeover of the PHENIX experiment, one of the original detectors designed to collect data at RHIC. It includes many new components that significantly enhance scientists' ability to learn about quark-gluon plasma (QGP), an exotic form of nuclear matter created in RHIC's energetic particle smashups.