Abort gap studies and cleaning during RHIC heavy ion operation

Since the RHIC Au-Au run in the year 2001 the 200 MHz cavity system was used at storage and a 28 MHz system during injection and acceleration. The rebucketing procedure causes significant debunching of heavy ion beams in addition to amplifying debunching due to other mechanisms. At the end of a four hour store, debunched beam can account for more than 30% of the total beam intensity. In order to minimize the risk of magnet quenching due to uncontrolled beam losses at the time of a beam dump, a combination of a fast transverse kicker and copper collimators were used to clean the abort gap. This report gives an overview of the upgraded gap cleaning procedure and the achieved performance. The upgraded procedure in conjunction with a new application allows to measure properties of the debunched beam routinely.