Experimental test of new technique to overcome spin-depolarizing resonances*

We recently tested a new spin resonance crossing technique, Kondratenko Crossing (KC), by sweeping an rf solenoid's frequency through an rf-induced spin resonance with both the KC and traditional Fast Crossing (FC) patterns. Using both rf bunched and unbunched 1.85 GeV/$c$ polarized deuterons stored in COSY, we varied the parameters of both crossing patterns. Compared to FC with the same crossing speed, KC reduced the depolarization by measured factors of 4$.$7 \textit{$\pm $} 0$.$3 and 19 \textit{$\pm $} $_{5}^{12}$ for unbunched and bunched beams, respectively. This showed the large potential benefit of KC over FC.