The PHENIX Experiment at RHIC

The physics emphases of the PHENIX collaboration and the design and current status of the PHENIX detector are discussed. The plan of the collaboration for making the most effective use of the available luminosity in the first years of RHIC operation is also presented.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. Further details of the PHENIX physics program available at http://www.rhic.bnl.gov/phenix

Application of Silicon Photomultipliers to Positron Emission Tomography

Historically, positron emission tomography (PET) systems have been based on scintillation crystals coupled to photomultipliers tubes (PMTs). However, the limited quantum efficiency, bulkiness, and relatively high cost per unit surface area of PMTs, along with the growth of new applications for PET, offers opportunities for other photodetectors. Among these, small-animal scanners, hybrid PET/MRI systems, and incorporation of time-of-flight information are of particular interest and require low-cost, compact, fast, and magnetic field compatible photodetectors. With high quantum efficiency and compact structure, avalanche photodiodes (APDs) overcome several of the drawbacks of PMTs, but this is offset by degraded signal-to-noise and timing properties. Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) offer an alternative solution, combining many of the advantages of PMTs and APDs. They have high gain, excellent timing properties and are insensitive to magnetic fields. At the present time, SiPM technology is rapidly developing and therefore an investigation into optimal design and operating conditions is underway together with detailed characterization of SiPM-based PET detectors. Published data are extremely promising and show good energy and timing resolution, as well as the ability to decode small scintillator arrays. SiPMs clearly have the potential to be the photodetector of choice for some, or even perhaps most, PET systems

Molecular mechanics work station for protein conformational studies

Interest in computational problems in Biology has intensified over the last few years, partly due to the development of techniques for the rapid cloning, sequencing, and mutagenesis of genes from organisims ranging from E. coli to Man. The central dogma of molecular biology; that DNA codes for mRNA which codes for protein, has been understood in a linear programming sense since the genetic code was cracked. But what is not understood at present is how a protein, once assembled as a long sequence of amino acids, folds back on itself to produce a three-dimensional structure which is unique to that protein and which dictates its chemical and biological activity. This folding process is purely physics, and involves the time evolution of a system of several thousand atoms which interact with each other and with atoms from the surrounding solvent. Molecular dynamics simulations on smaller molecules suggest that approaches which treat the protein as a classical ensemble of atoms interacting with each other via an empirical Hamiltonian can yield the kind of predictive results one would like when applied to proteins

Status of the g-2 experiment at BNL

The muon g-2 experiment at Brookhaven has successfully completed two exploratory runs using pion injection and direct muon injection for checkout and initial data taking. The main components of the experiment, which include the pion beam line, the superconducting storage ring and inflector magnets, the muon kicker and the lead-scintillating fiber calorimeters have been satisfactorily commissioned. First results on the anomalous magnetic moment of the positive muon from pion injection are in good agreement with previous experimental results for a(mu+) and a(mu-) from CERN and of comparable accuracy (13 ppm). Analysis of the 1998 muon injection run is in progress and expected to improve the precision to about 4 ppm. A first production run is scheduled for January 1999 with the goal of reaching the 1 ppm error level

New measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the positive muon

The muon anomalous magnetic moment has been measured in a new experiment at Brookhaven. Polarized muons were stored in a superferric ring, and the angular frequency difference, omegaa, between the spin precession and orbital frequencies was determined by measuring the time distribution of high-energy decay positrons. The ratio R of omegaa to the Larmor precession frequency of free protons, omegap, in the storage-ring magnetic field was measured. We find R = 3.707 220(48) 103. With /p = 3.183 345 47(47) this gives a+ = 1 165 925(15) 109 (13 ppm), in good agreement with the previous CERN measurements for + and and of approximately the same precisio