During low-energy operations below the regular injection energy in the
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), significant beam lifetime reductions
due to the beam-beam interaction in conjunction with large space charge tune
shifts have been observed. We report on dedicated experiments aimed at
understanding this phenomenon as well as preliminary simulation results, and
propose alternative working points to improve the beam lifetime in future
lowenergy RHIC runs.Comment: 6 pages, contribution to the ICFA Mini-Workshop on Beam-Beam Effects
in Hadron Colliders, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, 18-22 Mar 201
