Experimental Test of New Technique to Overcome Spin Depolarizing Resonances

We recently tested a new spin resonance crossing technique, Kondratenko Crossing (KC) by sweeping an rf solenoid's frequency through an rf-induced spin resonance with both the KC an traditional Fast Crossing (FC) patterns. Using both rf bunched and unbunched 1.85 GeV/c polarized deuterons stored in COSY, we varied the parameters of both crossing patterns. Compared to FC with the same crossing speed, KC reduced the depolarization by measured factors of 4.7 +/- 0.3 and 19 +/- (12)(5) for unbunched and bunched beams, respectively. This clearly showed the large potential benefit of Kondratenko Crossing over Fast Crossing.