Feasibility of Electron Cooling for Low-Energy RHIC Operation

A concrete interest in running RHIC at low energies in a range of 2.5-25 GeV/nucleon total energy of a single beam has recently emerged. Providing collisions in this energy range, which in the RHIC case is termed 'low-energy' operation, will help to answer one of the key questions in the field of QCD about existence and location of a critical point on the QCD phase diagram. However, luminosity projections are relatively low for the lowest energy points of interest. Luminosity improvement can be provided with electron cooling applied directly in RHIC at low energies. This report summarizes the expected luminosity improvement with electron cooling, possible technical approaches and various limitations.