Editing Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (section)

==The future==
RHIC began operation in 2000 and until November 2010 was the highest-energy heavy-ion collider in the world. The [[Large Hadron Collider|Large Hadron Collider (LHC)]] of [[CERN]], while used mainly for colliding protons, operates with heavy ions for about one month per year.  The LHC has operated with 25 times higher energies per nucleon. As of 2018, RHIC and the LHC are the only operating hadron colliders in the world.

Due to the longer operating time per year, a greater number of colliding ion species and collision energies can be studied at RHIC. In addition and unlike the LHC, RHIC is also able to accelerate spin polarized protons, which would leave RHIC as the world's highest energy accelerator for studying spin-polarized proton structure.

A major upgrade is the Electron–Ion Collider ('''EIC'''), the addition of a 18&nbsp;GeV high intensity electron beam facility, allowing electron–ion collisions. At least one new detector will have to be built to study the collisions. A review was published by Abhay Deshpande et al. in 2005.<ref>{{Cite journal |author1=A. Deshpande |author2=R. Milner |author3=R. Venugopalan |author4=W. Vogelsang |year=2005 |title=Study of the Fundamental Structure of Matter with an Electron–Ion Collider |journal=[[Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science]] |volume=55 |issue=1 |pages=165–228 |arxiv=hep-ph/0506148 |bibcode=2005ARNPS..55..165D |doi=10.1146/annurev.nucl.54.070103.181218|doi-access=free}}</ref> A more recent description is at:<ref>[https://arxiv.org/abs/1409.1633 E. C. Aschenauer et al., "eRHIC Design Study: An Electron–Ion Collider at BNL"], 2014.</ref>

On January 9, 2020, It was announced by Paul Dabbar, undersecretary of the US Department of Energy Office of Science, that the BNL eRHIC design has been selected for the future [[electron–ion collider]] (EIC) in the United States. In addition to the site selection, it was announced that the BNL EIC had acquired CD-0 (mission need) from the Department of Energy.<ref>[https://www.energy.gov/articles/us-department-energy-selects-brookhaven-national-laboratory-host-major-new-nuclear-physics, "U.S. Department of Energy Selects Brookhaven National Laboratory to Host Major New Nuclear Physics Facility"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200114043150/https://www.energy.gov/articles/us-department-energy-selects-brookhaven-national-laboratory-host-major-new-nuclear-physics, |date=2020-01-14 }} 2020.</ref>