The RHIC collider (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider) achieved a record in luminosity for polarized proton-proton collisions.

Increasing the accelerator luminosity means greater frequency of collisions and therefore ultimately more experimental data. Due to timed running time of the accelerator is thus luminosity one of the key factors. Currently, this accelerator is capable of producing approximately 1.2 trillion collisions with an energy of 200 GeV per week, which is roughly two times more than it was in 2012.

Behind this milestone stand innovation and improvement of accelerators, e.g. so called Electron focusation, which uses negatively charged electrons to compensate repellent forces between the positively charged protons circulating in two opposing beams. There is, therefore, low-energy beam collision of electrons with protons.

More information can be found here in the original report published on BNL Newsroom.

author: Vojtěch Pacík