RHIC Au operation in Run24

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) Run 24 was 27 weeks, operating with collisions at the STAR and sPHENIX detectors. The secondary running mode was gold at 100 GeV/u, where there was 3 weeks of operation. The goals of this run were to: reach an intensity of 1.8e9 ions/bunch and fully commission the 56 MHz cavity, ensure sPHENIX systems are ready for Run25,and deliver 1-2e9 minimum bias events for STAR. Beam was delayed 1 week due to two simultaneous failures of essential kicker systems: an AGS extraction bump power supply, and the yellow RHIC abort kicker. Elevated backgrounds at sPHENIX’s MAPS-based VerTeX (MVTX) detector required extensive studies and diagnostics. With a combination of local steering at sPHENIX and a large amplitude bump in the sector 10 and 12 arcs, the background levels with 12 bunches were reduced by a factor of 18. STAR was able to collect over 1.5e9 minimum bias events and the 56 MHz cavity was operated near its full voltage at 700 kV with 1.3e9 ions/bunch. This paper provides a summary of the run and details of the background studies.