Highlights from the STAR experiment

Abstract

We present an overview of the recent results obtained by the STAR Collaboration at RHIC.We report the beam energy dependence of directed flow of strange particles. These results support the assumption, that directed flow is formed before hadronization and observed particles are formed via coalescence of constituent quarks. First evidence of a non-zero directed flow of D0 meson is reported. We present the precision measurement of elliptic flow of D0 meson and the first measurement of Λc baryon in Au+Au collisions at sNN=200 GeV$\rad{}{s_{NN} } = 200\,{\rm{GeV}}$, which suggests thermalization of charm quarks. We report results of global Λ polarization measurements in Au+Au collisions, together with the investigation of polarization dependence of centrality and transverse momentum pT. Results from the STAR fixed-target program show good agreement with previously obtained results. A precise measurement of the Λ3H$_{{\rm{\Lambda }}}^{3} H$ lifetime is presented. Mesonic decay modes are used to reconstruct the Λ3H$_{{\rm{\Lambda }}}^{3} H$ from Au+Au collisions. The measured lifetime is about 50% shorter than the one of a free Λ, indicating a strong hyperon-nucleon interaction in the hypernucleus system. Finally, we give an outlook to detector upgrades for the Beam Energy Scan phase II.