Silver-clad tapes of highT_c Bi-Pb-Sr-Ca-Cu-O superconductors have been fabricated through the powder-in-tube method. The critical current density, J_c, of a thick tape was 534 A.cm⁻² (77 K, 0 T). Subsequent rolling and sintering of the tapes led to a gradual decrease inJ_c, instead of the expected increase. This was caused by the microcracks developed in the core material by a rather drastic reduction during the rolling of the tapes. A modified and well controlled rolling technique, on the other hand, resulted in much improvedJ_c values. Repeated rolling and sintering resulted in a good grain alignment and no microcracks were observed. In the present studies, maximumJ_c of 1846 A.cm⁻² (77 K, 0 T) and 2.43 × 10⁴ A.cm⁻² (4.2 K, 0 T) have been obtained Optimization of the processing and sintering parameters are expected to lead to still higherJ_c values.

The PHENIX experiment consists of a large detector system located at the newly commissioned relativistic heavy ion collider (RHIC) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. The primary goal of the PHENIX experiment is to look for signatures of the QCD prediction of a deconfined high-energy-density phase of nuclear matter quark gluon plasma. PHENIX started data taking for Au+Au collisions at √sNN=130 GeV in June 2000. The signals from the beam-beam counter (BBC) and zero degree calorimeter (ZDC) are used to determine the centrality of the collision. A Glauber model reproduces the ZDC spectrum reasonably well to determine the participants in a collision. Charged particle multiplicity distribution from the first PHENIX paper is compared with the other RHIC experiment and the CERN, SPS results. Transverse momentum of photons are measured in the electro-magnetic calorimeter (EMCal) and preliminary results are presented. Particle identification is made by a time of flight (TOF) detector and the results show clear separation of the charged hadrons from each other.