The STAR Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is used to record collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The TPC is the central element in a suite of detectors that surrounds the interaction vertex. The TPC provides complete coverage around the beam-line, and provides complete tracking for charged particles within ± 1.8 units of pseudo-rapidity of the center-of-mass frame. Charged particles with momenta greater than 100 MeV/c are Preprint submitted to Elsevier Science 5 February 2008 recorded. Multiplicities in excess of 3,000 tracks per event are routinely reconstructed in the software. The TPC measures 4 m in diameter by 4.2 m long, making it the largest TPC in the world.

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Parity-odd domains, corresponding to non-trivial topological solutions of the QCD vacuum, might be created during relativistic heavy-ion collisions. These domains are predicted to lead to charge separation of quarks along the system's orbital momentum axis. We investigate a three particle azimuthal correlator which is a P even observable, but directly sensitive to the charge separation effect. We report measurements of charged hadrons near center-of-mass rapidity with this observable in Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions at √ sNN =200 GeV using the STAR detector. A signal consistent with several expectations from the theory is detected. We discuss possible contributions from other effects that are not related to parity violation.

We present strange particle spectra and yields measured at midrapidity in √ s = 200 GeV proton-proton (p + p) collisions at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). We find that the previously observed universal transverse mass (m T ≡ p T 2 + m 2 ) scaling of hadron production in p + p collisions seems to break down at higher m T and that there is a difference in the shape of the m T spectrum between baryons and mesons. We observe midrapidity antibaryon to baryon ratios near unity for and baryons and no dependence of the ratio on transverse momentum, indicating that our data do not yet reach the quark-jet dominated region. We show the dependence of the mean transverse momentum p T on measured charged particle multiplicity and on particle mass and infer that these trends are consistent with gluon-jet dominated particle production. The data are compared with previous measurements made at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron and Intersecting Storage Rings and in Fermilab experiments and with leading-order and next-to-leading-order string fragmentation model predictions. We infer from these comparisons that the spectral shapes and particle yields from p + p collisions at RHIC energies have large contributions from gluon jets rather than from quark jets.

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