Tandem Injected Relativistic Heavy-Ion Facility At Brookhaven, Present And Future

The Brookhaven Tandem Facility has recently been joined to the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS) by means of an ∼ 680 in long heavy ion transfer line. The design and construction of this line are described as well as the tandem and AGS modifications which made it possible to initiate a relativistic heavy ion research program. Operational experience and performance during the first 14.6 GeV/amu 16 O and 28 Si runs are reviewed. At present the facility is capable of accelerating ions up to mass ∼ 32. Future developments are described which will lead to the acceleration of heavier ions up to gold, and hopefully to the construction of a relativistic heavy ion collider for the entire mass range at center of mass energies up to 250 GeV per nucleon pair.