Proton-proton elastic scattering experiment at RHIC

We describe an experiment to study proton-proton elastic scattering at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. RHIC allows a systematic study of elastic scattering in the center of mass energy range 60 endash 500 GeV and four-momentum transferred |t| up to 1.5 (GeV/c)2. There are two experimental configurations: in the small |t| (Coulomb-nuclear interference) region, one can measure the total cross section, the ratio of the real to imaginary parts of the scattering amplitude, and the slope parameter simultaneously with an error of a few percent (with a special lattice tune) and at large |t| (with the standard lattice), one can reach beyond the dip region. Over this entire range the same setup can be used to study elastic scattering exploiting polarized protons at RHIC to measure the difference in the total cross sections as a function of initial transverse spin states, the analyzing power, and the transverse spin correlation parameter. copyright 1995 American Institute of Physics