Spin flipping a stored polarized proton beam with an rf magnetic field

The authors studied the spin flipping of a vertically polarized, stored 139 MeV proton beam with an rf solenoid magnetic field. By sweeping the rf frequency through an rf depolarizing resonance, they made the spin flip. The spin flipping was more efficient for slower ramp times, and the spin flip efficiency peaked at some optimum ramp time that is not yet fully understood. Since frequent spin flipping could significantly reduce the systematic errors in scattering experiments using a stored polarized beam, it is very important to minimize the depolarization after each spin flip. In this experiment, with multiple spin flips, the authors found a polarization loss of 0.0000{sup {+-}}0.0005 per spin flip under the best conditions; this loss increased significantly for small changes in the conditions.