Polarizing helium-3 for down quark spin enrichment

The successful acceleration of an unpolarized Helium-3 beam by the AGS at BNL heralds the possibility of achieving polarized He-3 ions at RHIC. Assessing the level of polarization will be a challenge at high energy as the inelastic channels associated with He-3 scattering off a carbon target in the electromagnetic hadronic interference region may dilute expectations by comparison with the successful use of this method for proton polarimetry. The large anomalous magnetic moment of He-3 is helpful however, though the greater hadronic elastic cross section reduces the optimal analyzing power. Encouragement may be drawn from measurements indicating little high energy hadronic spin dependence.