On 16 July, a beam of gold nuclei circulated one of the two rings of Brookhaven’s Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) for the first time.
Equipped with superconducting magnets, the machine operates at 4.6 K. After several “mini-ramp” cycles to test the beam-accelerating system in the first (blue) ring, the second (yellow) ring was powered in preparation for injection. The purpose of this commissioning phase is to accelerate beams in both rings for collisions. After commissioning, the RHIC research programme proper is scheduled to begin in November this year.
