Towards Polarised Antiprotons: Machine Developments for Spin-Filtering Studies

We address the commissioning of the experimental equipment and the machine studies required for the first spin-filtering experiment with protons at the COSY ring in Julich (Germany) at a beam kinetic energy of 49.3 MeV. The implementation of a low-beta insertion made it possible to achieve beam lifetimes of 8000 s in the presence of a dense polarized hydrogen storage cell target. The developed techniques can be directly applied to antiproton machines and allow for the determination of the spin-dependent pbar-p cross sections via spin-filtering.