RHIC CHALLENGES FOR LOW ENERGY OPERATIONS

There is significant interest in RHIC heavy ion collisions at √s =5-50 GeV/u, motivated by a search for the QCD phase transition critical point. The lowest energies are well below the nominal RHIC gold injection √s = 19.6 GeV/u. There are several challenges that face RHIC operations in this regime, including longitudinal acceptance, magnet field quality, lattice control, and luminosity monitoring. We report on the status of work to address these challenges, including results from beam tests of low energy RHIC operations with protons and gold.