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
210
cm
sec
.
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:
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.
Naohito Saito