HDice, Highly-Polarized Low-Background Frozen-Spin HD Targets for CLAS experiments at Jefferson Lab

Large, portable frozen-spin HD (Deuterium-Hydride) targets have been developed for studying nucleon spin properties with low backgrounds. Protons and Deuterons in HD are polarized at low temperatures (∼10mK) inside a vertical dilution refrigerator (Oxford Kelvinox-1000) containing a high magnetic field (up to 17T). The targets reach a frozen-spin state within a few months, after which they can be cold transferred to an In-Beam Cryostat (IBC). The IBC, a thin-walled dilution refrigerator operating either horizontally or vertically, is use with quasi-4π detector systems in open geometries with minimal energy loss for exiting reaction products in nucleon structure experiments. The first application of this advanced target system has been used for Spin Sum Rule experiments at the LEGS facility in Brookhaven National Laboratory. An improved target production and handling system has been developed at Jefferson Lab for experiments with the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer, CLAS.