Studies of spin relaxation and recombination at the HERMES hydrogen/deuterium gas target

The HERMES (HERA measurement of spin) experiment is located in the eastern straight section of the HERA storage ring at DESY in Hamburg. It is designed to study the spin structure of the nucleons by deep inelastic scattering of polarized positrons resp. electrons provided by the HERA storage ring at 27.5 GeV impingingon the nucleons of internal polarized gas targets. The setup of the HERMES experiment is shown. First results are the measurement of the spin structure functions g_1"n with the polarized "3He target (1995) and of g_1"p with polarized atomic hydrogen target, which was operated in 1996 and 1997. Beneath the inclusive physics, the possibility to detect and identify hadronic scattering products allows the measurement of semi-inclusive processes with the central item of the HERMES physics program. (orig.)180 refs.SIGLEAvailable from TIB Hannover: RR 8919(2000-038) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekDEGerman