In the RHIC arc dipoles, the center of the cold mass lies above the center of the cryostat. At the maximum design field, the magnetic flux lines leak through the yoke to the asymmetrically located cryostat, which provides an additional return path. This introduces a systematic top-bottom asymmetry leading to a skew quadrupole term at high fields. A similar asymmetry is also created by any difference in weights of the upper and the lower yoke halves. Data from measurements of several RHIC dipoles are presented to study this effect. In the current production series of the RDIC dipoles, an attempt is made to compensate the effect of the cryostat by an asymmetry in the iron yoke. Seven dipoles with this type of yoke have been cold tested, and show a reduced saturation in the skew quadrupole term, as expected.

A high field quality in quadrupoles for the interaction region is crucial to the luminosity performance of high energy colliders such as the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The field quality in magnets is limited in part by manufacturing tolerances in the parts and assembly. A tuning shim method has been developed to reduce the relative field errors ({Delta}B/B) from {approximately}10{sup {minus}4} to {approximately}10{sup {minus}5} at 213 of the coil radius. Eight tuning shims having a variable thickness of iron are inserted after the construction and measurement of field harmonics in the magnet. In this paper the tuning shim technique is described for RHIC interaction region quadrupoles. The results of calculations and measurement are also presented.