The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC ) is the first and one of only two operating heavy-ion colliders, and the only spin-polarized proton collider ever built. Located at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Upton, New York, and used by an international team of researchers, it was the last operating particle collider in the US. By using RHIC to collide ions traveling at relativistic speeds, physicists study the primordial form of matter that existed in the universe shortly after the Big Bang. By colliding spin-polarized protons, the spin structure of the proton is explored.
RHIC was the second-highest-energy heavy-ion collider in the world, with nucleon energies for collisions reaching 100 GeV for gold ions and 250 GeV for protons. As of November 7, 2010, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has collided heavy ions of lead at higher energies than RHIC. The LHC operating time for ions (lead–lead and lead–proton collisions) is limited to about one month per year.
In 2010, RHIC physicists published results of temperature measurements from earlier experiments which concluded that temperatures in excess of 345 MeV (4 terakelvin or 7 trillion degrees Fahrenheit) had been achieved in gold ion collisions, and that these collision temperatures resulted in the breakdown of "normal matter" and the creation of a liquid-like quark–gluon plasma.
In January 2020, the US Department of Energy Office of Science selected the eRHIC design for the future Electron–Ion collider (EIC), building on the existing RHIC facility at BNL.
RHIC had its last collisions and ended data collection on 6 February 2026.
The accelerator RHIC is an intersecting storage ring particle accelerator. Two independent rings (arbitrarily denoted as "Blue" and "Yellow") circulate heavy ions and/or polarized protons in opposite directions and allow a virtually free choice of colliding positively charged particles (the eRHIC upgrade will allow collisions between positively and negatively charged particles). The RHIC double storage ring is hexagonally shaped and has a circumference of , with curved edges in which stored particles are deflected and focused by 1,740 superconducting magnets using niobium-titanium conductors. The dipole magnets operate at . The six interaction points (between the particles circulating in the two rings) are in the middle of the six relatively straight sections, where the two rings cross, allowing the particles to collide. The interaction points are enumerated by clock positions, with the injection near 6 o'clock. Two large experiments, STAR and sPHENIX, are located at 6 and 8 o'clock respectively. The sPHENIX experiment is the newest experiment to be built at RHIC, replacing PHENIX at the 8 o'clock position.
A particle passes through several stages of boosters before it reaches the RHIC storage ring. The first stage for ions is the electron beam ion source (EBIS), while for protons, the linear accelerator (Linac) is used. As an example, gold nuclei leaving the EBIS have a kinetic energy of per nucleon and have an electric charge Q = +32 (32 of 79 electrons stripped from the gold atom). The particles are then accelerated by the Booster synchrotron to per nucleon, which injects the projectile now with Q = +77 into the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS), before they finally reach per nucleon and are injected in a Q = +79 state (no electrons left) into the RHIC storage ring over the AGS-to-RHIC Transfer Line (AtR).
To date the types of particle combinations explored at RHIC are , , , , , , , , , , O+O. The projectiles typically travel at 99.995% of the speed of light. For collisions, the center-of-mass energy is typically per nucleon-pair, and was as low as per nucleon-pair. An average luminosity of was targeted during the planning. The current average luminosity of the collider has reached , 44 times the design value. The heavy ion luminosity is substantially increased through stochastic cooling.
One unique characteristic of RHIC is its capability to collide polarized protons. RHIC holds the record of highest energy polarized proton beams. Polarized protons are injected into RHIC and preserve this state throughout the energy ramp. This is a difficult task that is accomplished with the aid of corkscrew magnetics called 'Siberian snakes' (in RHIC a chain 4 helical dipole magnets). The corkscrew induces the magnetic field to spiral along the direction of the beam Run-9 achieved center-of-mass energy of on 12 February 2009. In Run-13 the average luminosity of the collider reached , with a time and intensity averaged polarization of 52%.
AC dipoles have been used in non-linear machine diagnostics for the first time in RHIC.
The experiments
There are two detectors currently operating at RHIC: STAR (6 o'clock, and near the AGS-to-RHIC Transfer Line) and sPHENIX (8 o'clock), the successor to PHENIX. PHOBOS (10 o'clock) completed its operation in 2005, and BRAHMS (2 o'clock) in 2006.
Among the two larger detectors, STAR is aimed at the detection of hadrons with its system of time projection chambers covering a large solid angle and in a conventionally generated solenoidal magnetic field, while PHENIX is further specialized in detecting rare and electromagnetic particles, using a partial coverage detector system in a superconductively generated axial magnetic field. The smaller detectors have larger pseudorapidity coverage, PHOBOS has the largest pseudorapidity coverage of all detectors, and tailored for bulk particle multiplicity measurement, while BRAHMS is designed for momentum spectroscopy, in order to study the so-called "small-x" and saturation physics. There is an additional experiment, PP2PP (now part of STAR), investigating spin dependence in p + p scattering.
The spokespersons for each of the experiments are: STAR: Frank Geurts (Rice University) PHENIX: Yasuyuki Akiba (Riken) sPHENIX: Megan Connors (Georgia State University) and Jin Huang (Brookhaven National Laboratory)
Current results
For the experimental objective of creating and studying the quark–gluon plasma, RHIC has the unique ability to provide baseline measurements for itself. This consists of both the lower energy and also lower mass number projectile combinations that do not result in the density of 200 GeV Au + Au collisions, like the p + p and d + Au collisions of the earlier runs, and also Cu + Cu collisions in Run-5.
Using this approach, important results of the measurement of the hot QCD matter created at RHIC are:
Collective anisotropy, or elliptic flow. The major part of the particles with lower momenta is emitted following an angular distribution (pT is the transverse momentum, angle with the reaction plane). This is a direct result of the elliptic shape of the nucleus overlap region during the collision and hydrodynamical property of the matter created. Jet quenching. In the heavy ion collision event, scattering with a high transverse pT can serve as a probe for the hot QCD matter, as it loses its energy while traveling through the medium. Experimentally, the quantity RAA (A is the mass number) being the quotient of observed jet yield in A + A collisions and Nbin × yield in p + p collisions shows a strong damping with increasing A, which is an indication of the new properties of the hot QCD matter created. Color glass condensate saturation. The Balitsky–Fadin–Kuraev–Lipatov (BFKL) dynamics which are the result of a resummation of large logarithmic terms ln(1/x) for deep inelastic scattering with small Bjorken-x, saturate at a unitarity limit , with Npart/2 being the number of participant nucleons in a collision (as opposed to the number of binary collisions). The observed charged multiplicity follows the expected dependency of , supporting the predictions of the color glass condensate model. For a detailed discussion, see e.g. Dmitri Kharzeev et al.; for an overview of color glass condensates, see e.g. Iancu & Venugopalan. Particle ratios. The particle ratios predicted by statistical models allow the calculation of parameters such as the temperature at chemical freeze-out Tch and hadron chemical potential . The experimental value Tch varies a bit with the model used, with most authors giving a value of 160 MeV < Tch < 180 MeV, which is very close to the expected QCD phase transition value of approximately 170 MeV obtained by lattice QCD calculations (see e.g. Karsch).
While in the first years, theorists were eager to claim that RHIC has discovered the quark–gluon plasma (e.g. Gyulassy & McLarren), the experimental groups were more careful not to jump to conclusions, citing various variables still in need of further measurement. The present results shows that the matter created is a fluid with a viscosity near the quantum limit, but is unlike a weakly interacting plasma (a widespread yet not quantitatively unfounded belief on how quark–gluon plasma looks).
A recent overview of the physics result is provided by the RHIC Experimental Evaluations 2004 , a community-wide effort of RHIC experiments to evaluate the current data in the context of implication for formation of a new state of matter. These results are from the first three years of data collection at RHIC.
New results were published in Physical Review Letters on February 16, 2010, stating the discovery of the first hints of symmetry transformations, and that the observations may suggest that bubbles formed in the aftermath of the collisions created in the RHIC may break parity symmetry, which normally characterizes interactions between quarks and gluons.
The RHIC physicists announced new temperature measurements for these experiments of up to 4 trillion kelvins, the highest temperature ever achieved in a laboratory. It is described as a recreation of the conditions that existed during the birth of the Universe.
Possible closure under flat nuclear science budget scenarios In late 2012, the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee (NSAC) was asked to advise the Department of Energy's Office of Science and the National Science Foundation how to implement the nuclear science long range plan written in 2007, if future nuclear science budgets continue to provide no growth over the next four years. In a narrowly decided vote, the NSAC committee showed a slight preference, based on non-science related considerations, for shutting down RHIC rather than canceling the construction of the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB).
By October 2015, the budget situation had improved, and RHIC continued operations into the next decade.
The future RHIC began operation in 2000 and until November 2010 was the highest-energy heavy-ion collider in the world. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of CERN, while used mainly for colliding protons, operates with heavy ions for about one month per year. The LHC has operated with 25 times higher energies per nucleon. As of 2018, RHIC and the LHC are the only operating hadron colliders in the world.
Due to the longer operating time per year, a greater number of colliding ion species and collision energies can be studied at RHIC. In addition and unlike the LHC, RHIC is also able to accelerate spin polarized protons, which would leave RHIC as the world's highest energy accelerator for studying spin-polarized proton structure.
A major upgrade is the Electron–Ion Collider (EIC), the addition of a 18 GeV high intensity electron beam facility, allowing electron–ion collisions. At least one new detector will have to be built to study the collisions. A review was published by Abhay Deshpande et al. in 2005. A more recent description is at:E. C. Aschenauer et al., "eRHIC Design Study: An Electron–Ion Collider at BNL" , 2014.