Overview on the Future Electron-Ion Collider Projects

One of the large new projects envisioned for the future US nuclear physics program is the construction of a high-energy electron ion collider. The motivation for such a machine would be primary directed at the study of the nucleon spin structure using polarized light ions and the study of low x gluon distributions in heavy nuclei. Two candidates coming from the two large DOE nuclear physics facilities, one at Brookhaven called eRHIC, and one at Jefferson Laboratory called ELIC are the primary candidates today

Measurement of spin-exchange rate constants between 129Xe and alkali metals

By measuring the relaxation rates of the nuclear spin polarization of Xe-129 in the presence of alkali-metal vapor at different densities, we have extracted the spin-exchange rates between Xe-129 and the three alkali metals K, Rb, and Cs. By studying the alkali-metal-Xe-129 spin-exchange rates as functions of the cell number density from 0.2 to 0.7 amagat, the binary collision and van der Waals molecular terms are separated, and constants governing both mechanisms are determined. The results from our work can be used to optimize the parameter space for polarizing Xe-129, a promising agent for magnetic resonance imaging and other applications