Measurement of Ion Beam Losses due to Bound-Free Pair Production in RHIC

When the LHC operates as a Pb82+ ion collider, losses of Pb81+ ions, created through Bound-free Pair Production at the collision point, and localized in cold magnets, are expected to be a major luminosity limit. With Au79+ ions at RHIC, this effect is not a limitation because the Au78+ production rate is low, and the Au78+ beam produced is inside the momentum aperture. When RHIC collided Cu29+ ions, secondary beam production rates were lower still but the Cu28+ ions produced were predicted to be lost at a well-defined location, creating the opportunity for the first direct observation of BFPP effects in an ion collider. We report on measurements of localized beam losses due to BFPP with copper beams in RHIC and comparisons to predictions from tracking and Monte Carlo simulation.