Spin Physics Program at RHIC

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) is being constructed at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). The RHIC offers a very unique opportunity to pursue high-energy spin physics because of its capability of accelerating polarized protons up to 250 GeV and its high luminosity of 210cmsec. The beam polarization of 70% is expected. The beam energy at RHIC is variable in the range GeV. At the first phase of the spin physics program, we expect about 100 days of polarized proton operation per year or so, which corresponds to the following integrated luminosities with 50% efficiency:

• 800 pb at =500 GeV
• 320 pb at =200 GeV

The major goals of the spin physics at RHIC are the study of the spin structure of the nucleon and the precision tests of the symmetries. In this talk, we present the spin physics capability of the PHENIX detector system with an emphasis put on the spin structure studies.

• spin structure of the proton