Welcome to RHIC News
We hope that this web publication will in some small measure reflect the excitement of the RHIC and AGS program at Brookhaven, as explained by some of the people who are doing the experiments, analyzing the data, and writing the papers.
Cold Nuclear Matter Effects on J/ψ Production
By Ramona Vogt
PHENIX has some very interesting results on the J/ψ nuclear
modification factor, RAA, in Au+Au collisions, as
nicely described by Tony Frawley in the September 25, 2007 issue
of RHIC News. Complicating the interpretation of RAA
are the effects of color screening on the J/ψ as well as
stronger effects on the higher charmonium resonances, the χcJ
and ψ′ states. More...
RHIC
Beams Change Their Charge
By Spencer Klein
RHIC accelerator physicists inject beams of bare nuclei (with
all of their electrons removed) into the accelerator. One might
expect that these beams would continue to circulate unchanged.
However, every rule has an exception, and, in the 2005 run with
copper beams, a team of Brookhaven National Lab, Lawrence
Berkeley National Lab and CERN researchers observed that some of
these bare nuclei gained electrons, transforming into a beam of
single-electron ions. More...
Starting Up RHIC
By Michael Sivertz
The RHIC Run 08 has started running "Physics", beginning a few
day early on 26 November 2007. Although I am the Scheduling
Physicist for RHIC this year, I am not an accelerator physicist,
so my view of the RHIC Start Up is more from the standpoint of a
spectator.
More...
In Memoriam: Michael P. Schmidt
Professor Michael P. Schmidt, high
energy elementary particle physicist, died on November 18. He
was born on January 18, 1954 in Los Angeles, CA., and his family
moved to San Jose, CA where he attended public schools. He
graduated from The University of California, Berkeley in 1975
with a B.S. degree with Highest Honors and Great Distinction in
General Scholarship. He received his PhD from Yale where he
wrote his dissertation on CP violation in K meson decays.
More...
The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National
Laboratory is a world-class scientific research facility primarily
funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Hundreds
of physicists from around the world use RHIC to study what the
universe may have looked like in the first few moments after its
creation. What physicists learn from these collisions may help us
understand more about why the physical world works the way it does,
from the smallest subatomic particles, to the largest stars.