Stochastic cooling in RHIC

The full 6-dimensional (x,x'; y,y'; z,z') stochastic cooling system for RHIC was completed and operational for the FY12 Uranium-Uranium collider run. Cooling enhances the integrated luminosity of the Uranium collisions by a factor of 5, primarily by reducing the transverse emittances but also by cooling in the longitudinal plane to preserve the bunch length. The components have been deployed incrementally over the past several runs, beginning with longitudinal cooling, then cooling in the vertical planes but multiplexed between the Yellow and Blue rings, next cooling both rings simultaneously in vertical (the horizontal plane was cooled by betatron coupling), and now simultaneous horizontal cooling has been commissioned. The system operated between 5 and 9 GHz and with 3 x 108 Uranium ions per bunch and produces a cooling half-time of approximately 20 minutes. The ultimate emittance is determined by the balance between cooling and emittance growth from Intra-Beam Scattering. Specific details of the apparatus and mathematical techniques for calculating its performance have been published elsewhere. Here we report on: the method of operation, results with beam, and comparison of results to simulations.