The regimes of polarization in a high energy e/sup +/e/sup -/ storage ring

Several regimes of polarization must be considered for high-energy e/sup +/e/sup -/ storage rings. Based on a theoretical paper by Derbenev, Kontratenko and Skrinsky from 1979 we describe the different cases. Particularly, it is shown that from a certain high energy onwards the polarization degree is expected to increase with energy. This is in sharp contrast to the usually considered regime where the expected polarization level decreases for higher beam energies. The theory of Derbenev, Kontratenko and Skrinsky is applied to the LEP storage ring with its energy range from the Z at 91 GeV to the W at 200 GeV. Though the theoretical expectations for beam polarization at the highest beam energy remain low, it is shown that the depolarization can move into a new regime for LEP above 60 GeV. The high energy LEP is the first storage ring that operates in this new and experimentally unknown regime of beam spin dynamics.