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

Waveform digitizing at 500 MHz

Experiment E787 at Brookhaven National Laboratory is designed to study the decay K/sup +/ ..-->.. ..pi../sup +/..nu../bar /nu// to a sensitivity of 2 /times/ 10/sup -10/. To achieve acceptable muon rejection it is necessary to couple traditional methods (range/energy/momentum correlation) with observation of the (..pi../sup +/ ..-->.. ..mu../sup +/..nu.., ..mu../sup +/ ..-->.. e/sup +/..nu../bar /nu//) decay sequence in scintillator. We report on the design and construction of 200 channels of relatively low cost solid state waveform digitizers. The distinguishing features are: 8 bits dynamic range, 500 MHz sampling, zero suppression on the fly, deep memory (up to .5 msec), and fast readout time (100 ..mu..sec for the entire system). We report on data obtained during the February-May 1988 run showing performance of the system for the observation of the above decay. 8 figs

Waveform digitizing at 500 MHz

Experiment E787 at Brookhaven National Laboratory is designed to study the decay K/sup +/ ..-->.. ..pi../sup +/..nu../bar /nu// to a sensitivity of 2 /times/ 10/sup /minus/10/. To achieve acceptable muon rejection it is necessary to couple traditional methods (range/energy/momentum correlation) with observation of the ..pi../sup +/ ..-->.. ..mu../sup +/ ..-->.. e/sup +/..nu../bar /nu// decay sequence in scintillator. We report on the design and construction of over 200 channels of relatively low cost solid state waveform digitizers. The distinguishing features are: 8 bits dynamic range, 500 MHz sampling, zero suppression on the fly, deep memory (up to .5 msec), and fast readout time (100 ..mu..sec for the entire system). We report on data obtained during the February--May 1988 run showing performance of the system for the observation of the above decay. 9 figs

Low mass dilepton production at RHIC energies

EIRecent results on low mass dilepton measurements from the PHENIX experiment are reported. Invariant mass spectra of $\phi-> e+e-$ are measured for the first time in Au-Au collisions at $\sqrt{^{S}NN} = 200 GeV$ in Run2. In d-Au collisions, the yields and MT slopes of both $\phi ->e+e-$ and $\phi-> K+K-$ are measured. Both results are consistent with each other within errors. In the future, a Hadron Blind Detector will be installed in PHENIX which will enhance our capabilities of rejecting external photon conversions and Dalitz pairs, that will result in a significant reduction of the large combinatorial background