AN EXPERIMENTAL PROPOSAL TO STUDY HEAVY-ION COOLING IN THE AGS DUE TO BEAM GAS OR THE INTRABEAM SCATTERING *

Low emittance of not-fully-stripped gold (Z=79) Au+77 Helium-like ion beams from the AGS (Alternating Gradient Synchrotron) injector to the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) could be attributed to the cooling phenomenon due to inelastic intrabeam scattering [1,2] or due to electron de-excitations from collisions with the residual gas [3]. The low emittance gold beams have always been observed at injection in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). There have been previous attempts to attribute the low emittance to a cooling due to the exchange of energy between ions during the inelastic intrabeam scattering. The Fano-Lichten theory [4] of electron promotion might be applied during inelastic collisions between helium like gold ions in the AGS. The two K-shell electrons in gold Au+77 could get promoted if the ions reach the critical distance of the closest approach during intra-beam scattering or collisions with the residual gas. During collisions if the ion energy is large enough, a quasi-molecule could be formed, and electron excitation could occur. During de-excitations of electrons, photons are emitted and a loss of total bunch energy could occur. This would lead to smaller beam size. We propose to inject gold ions with two missing electrons into RHIC, at injection energy, and study the beam behavior with bunched and de-bunched beam, varying the RF voltage and the beam intensity. If the "cooling " is observed additional X-ray detectors could be installed to observe emitted photons