The HERMES polarized 3He internal gas target

The HERMES experiment is investigating the spin structure of the proton and neutron via deep-inelastic scattering of polarized positrons from polarized nuclear targets. The polarized positrons are provided by the HERA positron storage ring at DESY, Hamburg, Germany. The targets are pure internal gas targets. Data acquisition began in 1995, utilizing a polarized 3He internal gas target to study the spin structure of the neutron. The target gas was polarized using the metastability-exchange optical-pumping technique and then injected into a cryogenically cooled target cell. The target was designed to operate with either longitudinal or transverse directions of polarization. Operating conditions included polarizations of up to 54% and target thicknesses of 1×1015 nucleons/cm2. In this paper the HERMES polarized 3He internal gas target is described in detail.