Measurement of the Neutral Pion $A_{LL}$ with the PHENIX Muon

The PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory commissioned a new forward calorimeter during the 2006 polarized proton run. The Muon Piston Calorimeter, MPC, is a $PbWO_4$ based electromagnetic calorimeter that will cover $3.1<\eta<3.65$ in pseudo rapidity and $2\pi$ in azimuthal angle. The MPC will be able to reconstruct neutral pions with momenta up to $p \sim 10 GeV$, allowing a measurement of the double helicity asymmetry $A_{LL}$ in a kinematic region previously inaccessible in the PHENIX experiment. In this poster I will present the commissioning, operation, and calibration of the MPC, as well as the latest status from the analysis of the neutral pion $A_{LL}$ from the $\sqrt{s} = 62 GeV$ run at RHIC.