Observations of Beam Losses Due to Bound-Free Pair Production in a Heavy-Ion Collider

We report the first observations of beam losses due to bound-free pair production at the interaction point of a heavy-ion collider. This process is expected to be a major luminosity limit for the CERN Large Hadron Collider when it operates with ²⁰⁸Pb⁸²⁺ ions because the localized energy deposition by the lost ions may quench superconducting magnet coils. Measurements were performed at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) during operation with 100  GeV/nucleon ⁶³Cu²⁹⁺ ions. At RHIC, the rate, energy and magnetic field are low enough so that magnet quenching is not an issue. The hadronic showers produced when the single-electron ions struck the RHIC beam pipe were observed using an array of photodiodes. The measurement confirms the order of magnitude of the theoretical cross section previously calculated by others.