The most recent conceptual design manual for the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven was published in May 1986 (BNL 51932). The purpose of this workshop was to review the design specifications in this RHIC reference manual, and to discuss in detail possible improvements in machine performance by addressing four main areas. These areas are beam-beam interactions, stochastic cooling, rf and bunch instabilities. The contents of this proceedings are as follows. Following an overview of the workshop, in which the motivation and goals are discussed in detail, transcripts of the first day talks are given. Many of these transcripts are copies of the original transparencies presented at the meeting. The following four sections contain contributed papers, that resulted from discussions at the workshop within each of the four working groups. In addition, there is a group summary for each of the four working groups at the beginning of each section. Finally, a list of participants is given.

The Workshop on the ''RHIC'' Performance was held at the Collider Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory, from March 21 to 26, 1988. The Workshop had three major goals: To check the validity and soundness of the methods described in the Conceptual Design Report (CDR, May 1986), in order to ensure the performance proposed there. To initiate and study techniques that increase the luminosity in the second stage of RHIC by a factor of twenty beyond the CDR values, and to reduce the interactive region to a rms length of less than 20 cm. To investigate possible limits on beam intensity and dimensions, and their impact on RHIC hardware. Conclusions and recommendations on these topics are discussed in this paper. 5 tabs.

This proceedings contains the talks delivered at the plenary and parallel sessions. Topics covered include e⁺e⁻ Physics at Z0, String Theory and Theory of Extended Objects, High Energy pp Physics, Non-Accelerator Particle Physics, Conformal Field Theory, e⁺e⁻ Physics below Z⁰, Structure Functions and Deep Inelastic Scattering, Neutrino Physics, Recent Developments in 2-Dimensional Gravity, Lattice Gauge Theory and Computer Simulations, CP Violation , Accelerator Physics, Cosmology and Particle Physics, Interface Between Particle and Condensed Matter Physics, Detector R&D, and Astroparticle Physics.