Design studies on the RHIC position monitor system

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) under construction at Brookhaven National Laboratory will consist of two superconducting storage rings 3.8 km in circumference sharing one tunnel in a side by side configuration. After injection from the existing AGS, the collider will accelerate and store a range of ion species extending from protons through gold to energies of 250 GeV for protons and 100 GeV/nucleon for fully stripped gold ions. Storage times should exceed 10 hours. As in most modem colliders the RHIC beam position monitor system is the most extensive beam diagnostic in terms of both cost and channel multiplicity. The final system will consist of approximately 500 position monitors with over 600 measurement planes of electronics. Development of this system began early so that the monitors would be available for installation into the magnet cryostats. The following document summarizes some of the efforts undertaken during the design phase of this system. Because much of this work is still in progress, the document is necessarily incomplete and some details may not reflect the final system configuration