High intensity proton acceleration at the Brookhaven AGS-an update

The AGS accelerator complex is into its third year of 60+/spl times/10/sup 12/ (teraproton=Tp) per cycle operation. The hardware making up the complex as configured in 1997 is briefly mentioned. The present level of accelerator performance is discussed. This includes beam transfer efficiencies at each step in the acceleration process, i.e. losses; which are a serious issue at this intensity level. Progress made in understanding beam behavior at the Linac-to-Booster (LtB) injection, at the Booster-to-AGS (BtA) transfer as well as across the 450 ms AGS accumulation porch is presented. The state of transition crossing, with the gamma-tr jump is described. Coherent effects including those driven by space charge are important at all of these steps.