RHIC spin program. Revision 07/97

Colliding beams of high energy polarized protons at RHIC is an excellent way to probe the polarization of gluons, {anti u} and {anti d} quarks in a polarized proton. RHIC is the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider being built now at Brookhaven in the ISABELLE tunnel. It is designed to collide gold ions on gold ions at 100 GeV/ nucleon. Its goal is to discover the quark-gluon plasma, and the first collisions are expected in March, 1999. RHIC will also make an ideal polarized proton collider with high luminosity and 250 GeV x 250 GeV collisions. The RHIC spin physics program is: (1) Use well-understood perturbative QCD probes to study non-perturbative confining dynamics in QCD. The author will measure gluon and sea quark polarization in a polarized proton, and polarization of quarks in a transversely polarized proton. (2) Look for additional surprises using the first high energy polarized proton colliders. The author will look for the expected maximal parity violation in W and Z boson production, search for parity violation in other processes, and test parton models with spin. This lecture is organized around a few of the key ideas: Siberian Snakes -- What are they? High energy proton-proton collisions are scatters of quarks and leptons. At high x, a polarized proton beam is a beam of polarized u quarks. Quark and gluon collisions are very sensitive to spin. The author discusses two reactions: how direct photon production measures gluon polarization, and how W{sup {minus}} boson production measures u and {anti d} quark polarization