Highlights from STAR: probing the early medium in heavy ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent findings from the STAR Collaboration at RHIC, focusing on early medium properties in heavy ion collisions, including strangeness production, local parity violation, and medium viscosity, with future plans for critical point search.

Contribution

It provides new experimental insights into the early medium created in heavy ion collisions, including hypernucleus observation and parity violation effects.

Findings

Observation of hypertriton production

Detection of reaction-plane-dependent angular correlations

Estimation of medium viscosity from elliptic flow measurements

Abstract

We present highlights of recent results from the STAR Collaboration at RHIC, focusing on the properties of the early medium created in heavy ion collisions. We emphasize the strangeness production including the observation of a hypernucleus (the hypertriton), the observation of reaction-plane-dependent angular correlation of charged particles searching for local strong parity violation effects in heavy ion collisions, and the evaluation of the medium viscosity from measurements of elliptic flow. We discuss STAR's plan for the "Critical Point Search" program at RHIC.