We report the STAR measurement of Phi meson production in Au+Au and p+p collisions at sqrt (s)=200 GeV. Using the event mixing technique, the Phi spectra and yields are obtained at mid-rapidity for five centrality bins in Au+Au collisions and for non-singly-diffractive p+p collisions. It is found that the Phi transverse momentum distributions from Au+Au collisions are better fitted with a single-exponential while the p+p spectrum is better described by a double-exponential distribution. The measured nuclear modification factors indicate that Phi production in central Au+Au collisions is suppressed relative to peripheral collisions when scaled by the number of binary collisions. The systematics of <pt> versus centrality and the constant Phi/K- ratio versus beam species, centrality, and collision energy rule out kaon coalescence as the dominant mechanism for Phi production.
We report measurements of charmed-hadron ($D^{0}$, $D^{*}$) production cross sections at mid-rapidity in $p$ + $p$ collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 200 GeV by the STAR experiment. Charmed hadrons were reconstructed via the hadronic decays $D^{0}\rightarrow K^{-}\pi^{+}$, $D^{*+}\rightarrow D^{0}\pi^{+}\rightarrow K^{-}\pi^{+}\pi^{+}$ and their charge conjugates, covering the $p_T$ range of 0.6$-$2.0 GeV/$c$ and 2.0$-$6.0 GeV/$c$ for $D^{0}$ and $D^{*+}$, respectively. From this analysis, the charm-pair production cross section at mid-rapidity is $d\sigma/dy|_{y=0}^{c\bar{c}}$ = 170 $\pm$ 45 (stat.) $^{+38}_{-59}$ (sys.) $\mu$b. The extracted charm-pair cross section is compared to perturbative QCD calculations. The transverse momentum differential cross section is found to be consistent with the upper bound of a Fixed-Order Next-to-Leading Logarithm calculation.
Measurements of the elliptic flow, $v_{2}$, of identified hadrons ($\pi^{\pm}$, $K^{\pm}$, $K_{s}^{0}$, $p$, $\bar{p}$, $\phi$, $\Lambda$, $\bar{\Lambda}$, $\Xi^{-}$, $\bar{\Xi}^{+}$, $\Omega^{-}$, $\bar{\Omega}^{+}$) in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=$ 7.7, 11.5, 19.6, 27, 39 and 62.4 GeV are presented. The measurements were done at mid-rapidity using the Time Projection Chamber and the Time-of-Flight detectors of the STAR experiment during the Beam Energy Scan program at RHIC. A significant difference in the $v_{2}$ values for particles and the corresponding anti-particles was observed at all transverse momenta for the first time. The difference increases with decreasing center-of-mass energy, $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ (or increasing baryon chemical potential, $\mu_{B}$) and is larger for the baryons as compared to the mesons. This implies that particles and anti-particles are no longer consistent with the universal number-of-constituent quark (NCQ) scaling of $v_{2}$ that was observed at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=$ 200 GeV. However, for the group of particles NCQ scaling at $(m_{T}-m_{0})/n_{q}>$ 0.4 GeV/$c^{2}$ is not violated within $\pm$10%. The $v_{2}$ values for $\phi$ mesons at 7.7 and 11.5 GeV are approximately two standard deviations from the trend defined by the other hadrons at the highest measured $p_{T}$ values.
The first measurements of light antinucleus production in Au+Au collisions at RHIC are reported. The observed production rates for antideuterons and antihelions are much larger than in lower energy nucleus-nucleus collisions. A coalescence model analysis of the yields indicates that there is little or no increase in the antinucleon freeze-out volume compared to collisions at SPS energy. These analyses also indicate that the antihelion freeze-out volume is smaller than the antideuteron freeze-out volume.
A systematic study is presented for centrality, transverse momentum ($p_T$) and pseudorapidity ($\eta$) dependence of the inclusive charged hadron elliptic flow ($v_2$) at midrapidity($|\eta| < 1.0$) in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 7.7, 11.5, 19.6, 27 and 39 GeV. The results obtained with different methods, including correlations with the event plane reconstructed in a region separated by a large pseudorapidity gap and 4-particle cumulants ($v_2{4}$), are presented in order to investigate non-flow correlations and $v_2$ fluctuations. We observe that the difference between $v_2{2}$ and $v_2{4}$ is smaller at the lower collision energies. Values of $v_2$, scaled by the initial coordinate space eccentricity, $v_{2}/\varepsilon$, as a function of $p_T$ are larger in more central collisions, suggesting stronger collective flow develops in more central collisions, similar to the results at higher collision energies. These results are compared to measurements at higher energies at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider ($\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 62.4 and 200 GeV) and at the Large Hadron Collider (Pb + Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 2.76 TeV). The $v_2(p_T)$ values for fixed $p_T$ rise with increasing collision energy within the $p_T$ range studied ($< 2 {\rm GeV}/c$). A comparison to viscous hydrodynamic simulations is made to potentially help understand the energy dependence of $v_{2}(p_{T})$. We also compare the $v_2$ results to UrQMD and AMPT transport model calculations, and physics implications on the dominance of partonic versus hadronic phases in the system created at Beam Energy Scan (BES) energies are discussed.
Identified charged particle spectra of $\pi^{\pm}$, $K^{\pm}$, $p$ and $\pbar$ at mid-rapidity ($|y|<0.1$) measured by the $\dedx$ method in the STAR-TPC are reported for $pp$ and d+Au collisions at $\snn = 200$ GeV and for Au+Au collisions at 62.4 GeV, 130 GeV, and 200 GeV. ... [Shortened for arXiv list. Full abstract in manuscript.]
We report on the first measurement of elliptic flow $v_2(p_T)$ of multi-strange baryons $\Xi+\bar{Xi}$ and $\Omega+\bar{Omega} in heavy-ion collisions. In minimum bias Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV, a significant amount of elliptic flow, comparable to other non-strange baryons, is observed for multi-strange baryons which are expected to be particularly sensitive to the dynamics of the partonic stage of heavy-ion collisions. The $p_T$ dependence of $v_2$ of the multi-strange baryons confirms the number of constituent quark scaling previously observed for lighter hadrons. These results support the idea that a substantial fraction of the observed collective motion is developed at the early partonic stage in ultra-relativistic nuclear collisions at RHIC.
We report measurements of Upsilon meson production in p+p, d+Au, and Au+Au collisions using the STAR detector at RHIC. We compare the Upsilon yield to the measured cross section in p+p collisions in order to quantify any modifications of the yield in cold nuclear matter using d+Au data and in hot nuclear matter using Au+Au data separated into three centrality classes. Our p+p measurement is based on three times the statistics of our previous result. We obtain a nuclear modification factor for Upsilon(1S+2S+3S) in the rapidity range |y|<1 in d+Au collisions of R_dAu = 0.79 +/- 0.24 (stat.) +/- 0.03 (sys.) +/- 0.10 (pp sys.). A comparison with models including shadowing and initial state parton energy loss indicates the presence of additional cold-nuclear matter suppression. Similarly, in the top 10% most-central Au+Au collisions, we measure a nuclear modification factor of R_AA=0.49 +/- 0.1 (stat.) +/- 0.02 (sys.) +/- 0.06 (pp sys.), which is a larger suppression factor than that seen in cold nuclear matter. Our results are consistent with complete suppression of excited-state Upsilon mesons in Au+Au collisions. The additional suppression in Au+Au is consistent with the level expected in model calculations that include the presence of a hot, deconfined Quark-Gluon Plasma. However, understanding the suppression seen in d+Au is still needed before any definitive statements about the nature of the suppression in Au+Au can be made.
We present results on strange and multi-strange particle production in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=62.4$ GeV as measured with the STAR detector at RHIC. Mid-rapidity transverse momentum spectra and integrated yields of $K^{0}_{S}$, $\Lambda$, $\Xi$, $\Omega$ and their anti-particles are presented for different centrality classes. The particle yields and ratios follow a smooth energy dependence. Chemical freeze-out parameters, temperature, baryon chemical potential and strangeness saturation factor obtained from the particle yields are presented. Intermediate transverse momentum ($p_T$) phenomena are discussed based on the ratio of the measured baryon-to-meson spectra and nuclear modification factor. The centrality dependence of various measurements presented show a similar behavior as seen in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV.
The first measurement of direct photons in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV is presented. The direct photon signal is extracted as a function of the Au+Au collision centrality and compared to NLO pQCD calculations. The direct photon yield is shown to scale with the number of nucleon-nucleon collisions for all centralities.
Forum