Stochastic cooling of a high energy collider

Gold beams in RHIC revolve more than a billion times over the course of a data acquisition session or store. During operations with these heavy ions the event rates in the detectors decay as the beams diffuse. A primary cause for this beam diffusion is small angle Coloumb scattering of the particles within the bunches. This intra-beam scattering (IBS) is particularly problematic at high energy because the negative mass effect removes the possibility of even approximate thermal equilibrium. Stochastic cooling can combat IBS. A theory of bunched beam cooling was developed in the early eighties and stochastic cooling systems for the SPS and the Tevatron were explored. Cooling for heavy ions in RHIC was also considered.