Results from the PHENIX RPC R and D and long-term performance monitoring

A new Resistive Plate Chamber (RPC) based fast muon trigger system has been developed and partially installed in the PHENIX experiment. This new trigger will allow the PHENIX data acquisition system to efficiently sample high pT (>20GeV/c) muons from W decays in polarized proton+proton collisions at √(s)=500GeV at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. This measurement will significantly improve our knowledge of flavor separated quark and anti-quark polarization in the proton. Since 2005, a multi-institutional effort within the PHENIX Forward Trigger group was devoted to study the properties and performance of bakelite RPCs. In this presentation, the results of the PHENIX RPC R and D will be reported.