RHIC’s gold record

For the first time a collider has brought ions of helium-3 into collision with gold nuclei

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The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory completed its 14th physics run in July 2014, during which gold-ion beams were brought into collision at both low energy (7.3 GeV/nucleon) and high energy (100 GeV/nucleon). The runs at high energy set new records for the instantaneous and average stored luminosities. This stellar performance also allowed the introduction of another combination of species to the study of quark-gluon plasma. For the first time a collider brought ions of helium-3 – a rare helium isotope with two protons and a single neutron – into collision with gold nuclei.

Read more: "RHIC's new gold record" – CERN Courier