Collaborative Research: PP2PP, a Comprehensive Elastic proton-proton Scattering Experiment at RHIC

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The award covers graduate student and undergraduate student researchwith the PP2PP experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider atthe Brookhaven National Laboratory. The goal of the internationalPP2PP collaboration is the comprehensive measurement ofproton-proton elastic scattering, eventually covering a wide, andunexplored, domain in energy (from 50 to 500 GeV) and momentumtransfer (from 0.006 GeV^2 to 1.3 GeV^2) within a single experiment.The first data run with polarized proton beams will take place inthe Fall 2001. Two Roman pot detector stations will be used, one ineach arm. Two more stations plus central tracking will be added infollowing years. With the experiment and by comparing with existingantiproton-proton elastic scattering data, the helicity structure ofthe long-distance pp interaction will be investigated, the exchangemechanisms will be studied and connected to QCD calculations ofmulti-gluon exchanges. The intriguing dip structure in pp elasticscattering will be accessible with high statistics. At very smallmomentum transfers PP2PP will measure absolute cross sections andthe details of the forward scattering amplitude. Beyond 2003, aspecial tune of the RHIC machine will allow the lowest accessiblemomentum transfer to reach into the Coulomb regime. The small scaleof the PP2PP experiment makes it ideally suited for participation byundergraduate students in all aspects of construction, data taking,and data analysis.