Beam-beam effects in space charge dominated ion beams

During low-energy operations below the regular injection energy in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), significant beam lifetime reductions due to the beam-beam interaction in conjunction with large space charge tune shifts have been observed. We report on dedicated experiments aimed at understanding this phenomenon as well as preliminary simulation results, and propose alternative working points to improve the beam lifetime in future lowenergy RHIC runs.