Probing Parton Dynamics of QCD Matter with $Omega$ and $phi$ Production

We present measurements of $Omega$ and $phi$ production at mid-rapidity from Au+Au collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energies $sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 7.7, 11.5, 19.6, 27 and 39 GeV by the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). Motivated by the coalescence formation mechanism for these strange hadrons, we study the ratios of $N(Omega^{-}+Omega^{+})/(2N(phi))$. These ratios as a function of transverse momentum ($p_T$) fall on a consistent trend at high collision energies, but start to show deviations in peripheral collisions at $sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 19.6, 27 and 39 GeV, and in central collisions at 11.5 GeV in the intermediate $p_T$ region of 2.4-3.6 GeV/c. We further evaluate empirically the strange quark $p_T$ distributions at hadronization by studying the $Omega/phi$ ratios scaled by the number of constituent quarks. The NCQ-scaled $Omega/phi$ ratios show a suppression of strange quark production in central collisions at 11.5 GeV compared to $sqrt{s_{NN}} >= 19.6$ GeV. The shapes of the presumably thermal strange quark distributions in 0-60% most central collisions at 7.7 GeV show significant deviations from those in 0-10% most central collisions at higher energies. These features suggest that there is likely a change of the underlying strange quark dynamics in the transition from quark-matter to hadronic matter at collision energies below 19.6 GeV.

Beam energy dependence of strange hadron production from STAR at RHIC

We present STAR measurements of K^{0}_{S}, phi, Lambda, Xi, and Omega at mid-rapidity from Au+Au collisions at sqrt{s_{NN}} = 7.7, 11.5, 19.6, 27, and 39 GeV from the Beam Energy Scan (BES) program at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). Nuclear modification factors and baryon-to-meson ratios are measured to understand recombination and parton energy loss mechanisms. Implications on partonic versus hadronic dynamics at low beam energies are discussed.

Probe the QCD phase diagram with phi-meson production in relativistic nuclear collisions at STAR

We present phi-meson transverse momentum distribution as well as its elliptic flow (v_{2}) measurements in Au + Au collisions at center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair sqrt{s_{NN}} = 7.7, 11.5 and 39 GeV with the data taken from STAR experiment at RHIC in the year 2010. We discuss the energy dependence of phi-meson elliptic flow (v_{2}) and central-to-peripheral nuclear modification factors (R_{CP}). The v_{2} of phi-mesons are compared to those from other hadron species. The implications on partonic-hadronic phase transition are discussed.