We present high precision measurements of elliptic flow near midrapidity ($|y|<1.0$) for multi-strange hadrons and $phi$ meson as a function of centrality and transverse momentum in Au+Au collisions at center of mass energy $sqrt{s_{NN}}=$ 200 GeV. W
e observe that the transverse momentum dependence of $phi$ and $Omega$ $v_{2}$ is similar to that of $pi$ and $p$, respectively, which may indicate that the heavier strange quark flows as strongly as the lighter up and down quarks. This observation constitutes a clear piece of evidence for the development of partonic collectivity in heavy-ion collisions at the top RHIC energy. Number of constituent quark scaling is found to hold within statistical uncertainty for both 0-30$%$ and 30-80$%$ collision centrality. There is an indication of the breakdown of previously observed mass ordering between $phi$ and proton $v_{2}$ at low transverse momentum in the 0-30$%$ centrality range, possibly indicating late hadronic interactions affecting the proton $v_{2}$.
We report the beam energy (sqrt s_{NN} = 7.7 - 200 GeV) and collision centrality dependence of the mean (M), standard deviation (sigma), skewness (S), and kurtosis (kappa) of the net-proton multiplicity distributions in Au+Au collisions. The measurem
ents are carried out by the STAR experiment at midrapidity (|y| < 0.5) and within the transverse momentum range 0.4 < pT < 0.8 GeV/c in the first phase of the Beam Energy Scan program at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. These measurements are important for understanding the Quantum Chromodynamic (QCD) phase diagram. The products of the moments, Ssigma and kappasigma^{2}, are sensitive to the correlation length of the hot and dense medium created in the collisions and are related to the ratios of baryon number susceptibilities of corresponding orders. The products of moments are found to have values significantly below the Skellam expectation and close to expectations based on independent proton and anti-proton production. The measurements are compared to a transport model calculation to understand the effect of acceptance and baryon number conservation, and also to a hadron resonance gas model.
We report on K*0 production at mid-rapidity in Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions at sqrt{s_{NN}} = 62.4 and 200 GeV collected by the Solenoid Tracker at RHIC (STAR) detector. The K*0 is reconstructed via the hadronic decays K*0 to K+ pi- and bar{K*0} to K-p
i+. Transverse momentum, pT, spectra are measured over a range of pT extending from 0.2 GeV/c to 5 GeV/c. The center of mass energy and system size dependence of the rapidity density, dN/dy, and the average transverse momentum, <pT>, are presented. The measured N(K*0)/N(K) and N(phi)/N(K*0) ratios favor the dominance of re-scattering of decay daughters of K*0 over the hadronic regeneration for the K*0 production. In the intermediate pT region (2.0 < pT < 4.0 GeV/c), the elliptic flow parameter, v2, and the nuclear modification factor, RCP, agree with the expectations from the quark coalescence model of particle production.
We report the first measurements of the kurtosis (kappa), skewness (S) and variance (sigma^2) of net-proton multiplicity (N_p - N_pbar) distributions at midrapidity for Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 19.6, 62.4, and 200 GeV corresponding to baryon
chemical potentials (mu_B) between 200 - 20 MeV. Our measurements of the products kappa sigma^2 and S sigma, which can be related to theoretical calculations sensitive to baryon number susceptibilities and long range correlations, are constant as functions of collision centrality. We compare these products with results from lattice QCD and various models without a critical point and study the sqrt(s_NN) dependence of kappa sigma^2. From the measurements at the three beam energies, we find no evidence for a critical point in the QCD phase diagram for mu_B below 200 MeV.
We present the first measurements of identified hadron production, azimuthal anisotropy, and pion interferometry from Au+Au collisions below the nominal injection energy at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) facility. The data were collected
using the large acceptance STAR detector at $sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 9.2 GeV from a test run of the collider in the year 2008. Midrapidity results on multiplicity density (dN/dy) in rapidity (y), average transverse momentum (<pT>), particle ratios, elliptic flow, and HBT radii are consistent with the corresponding results at similar $sqrt{s_{NN}}$ from fixed target experiments. Directed flow measurements are presented for both midrapidity and forward rapidity regions. Furthermore the collision centrality dependence of identified particle dN/dy, <pT>, and particle ratios are discussed. These results also demonstrate the readiness of the STAR detector to undertake the proposed QCD critical point search and the exploration of the QCD phase diagram at RHIC.
