Performance of a hydrogen/deuterium polarized gas target in a storage ring

The performance of a high-density polarized hydrogen/deuterium gas target internal to a medium-energy electron storage ring is presented. Compared to our previous electron scattering experiments with tensor-polarized deuterium at NIKHEF (Zhou et al., Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A 378 (1996) 40; Ferro-Luzzi et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 77 (1996) 2630; Van den Brand et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 78 (1997) 1235; Bouwhuis et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 82 (1999) 687; Zhou et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 82 (1999) 687) the target figure of merit, (polarization)2×luminosity, was improved by more than an order of magnitude. The target density was increased by upgrading the flux of nuclear-polarized atoms injected into the storage cell and by using a longer (60 cm) and colder (∼70 K) storage cell. A maximal target thickness of 1.2 (1.1)±0.1×1014 nuclei/cm2 was achieved with deuterium (hydrogen). With typical beam currents of 110 mA, this corresponds to a luminosity of about 8.4 (7.8)±0.8×1031e− nuclei cm−2 s−1. By reducing the molecular background and using a stronger target guide field, a higher polarization was achieved. The target was used in combination with a 720 MeV polarized electron beam stored in the AmPS ring (NIKHEF) to measure spin observables in electron–proton and electron–deuteron scattering. Scattered electrons were detected in a large acceptance magnetic spectrometer. Ejected hadrons were detected in a single time-of-flight scintillator array. The product of beam and target vector polarization, PePt, was determined from the known spin-correlation parameters of e′p quasi-elastic (or elastic) scattering. With the deuterium (hydrogen) target, values up to PePt=0.49±0.03 (0.32±0.03) were obtained with an electron beam polarization of Pe=0.62±0.04 (0.56±0.03) as measured with a Compton backscattering polarimeter (Passchier et al., Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A 414 (1998) 4988). From this, we deduce a cell-averaged target polarization of Pt=0.78±0.07 (0.58±0.07), including the dilution by unpolarized molecules.