Recently PHOBOS has focused on the study of fluctuations and correlations in particle production in heavy-ion collisions at the highest energies delivered by the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). In this report, we present results on event-by-event elliptic flow fluctuations in Au + Au collisions at √sNN =200 GeV. A data-driven method was used to estimate the dominant contribution from non-flow correlations. Over the broad range of collision centralities, the observed large elliptic flow fluctuations are in agreement with the fluctuations in the initial source eccentricity.

© 2016 American Physical Society. Balance functions have been measured in terms of relative pseudorapidity (Δη) for charged particle pairs at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider from Au + Au collisions at sNN=7.7GeV to 200 GeV using the STAR detector. These results are compared with balance functions measured at the CERN Large Hadron Collider from Pb + Pb collisions at sNN=2.76TeV by the ALICE Collaboration. The width of the balance function decreases as the collisions become more central and as the beam energy is increased. In contrast, the widths of the balance functions calculated using shuffled events show little dependence on centrality or beam energy and are larger than the observed widths. Balance function widths calculated using events generated by UrQMD are wider than the measured widths in central collisions and show little centrality dependence. The measured widths of the balance functions in central collisions are consistent with the delayed hadronization of a deconfined quark gluon plasma (QGP). The narrowing of the balance function in central collisions at sNN=7.7 GeV implies that a QGP is still being created at this relatively low energy.

© 2015 The Authors. Dihadron angular correlations in d + Au collisions at √sNN = 200 GeV are reported as a function of the measured zero-degree calorimeter neutral energy and the forward charged hadron multiplicity in the Au-beam direction. A finite correlated yield is observed at large relative pseudorapidity (δη) on the near side (i.e. relative azimuth δϕ~0). This correlated yield as a function of δη appears to scale with the dominant, primarily jet-related, away-side (δϕ~π) yield. The Fourier coefficients of the δϕ correlation, Vn=〈cos n δ ϕ〉, have a strong δη dependence. In addition, it is found that V1 is approximately inversely proportional to the mid-rapidity event multiplicity, while V2 is independent of it with similar magnitude in the forward (d-going) and backward (Au-going) directions.

© 2015 American Physical Society. ©2015 American Physical Society. A search for the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) critical point was performed by the STAR experiment at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, using dynamical fluctuations of unlike particle pairs. Heavy ion collisions were studied over a large range of collision energies with homogeneous acceptance and excellent particle identification, covering a significant range in the QCD phase diagram where a critical point may be located. Dynamical Kπ, pπ, and Kp fluctuations as measured by the STAR experiment in central 0-5% Au + Au collisions from center-of-mass collision energies sNN=7.7 to 200 GeV are presented. The observable νdyn was used to quantify the magnitude of the dynamical fluctuations in event-by-event measurements of the Kπ, pπ, and Kp pairs. The energy dependences of these fluctuations from central 0-5% Au + Au collisions all demonstrate a smooth evolution with collision energy.

© 2015 American Physical Society. We present measurements of π- and π+ elliptic flow, v2, at midrapidity in Au+Au collisions at sNN=200, 62.4, 39, 27, 19.6, 11.5, and 7.7 GeV, as a function of event-by-event charge asymmetry, Ach, based on data from the STAR experiment at RHIC. We find that π- (π+) elliptic flow linearly increases (decreases) with charge asymmetry for most centrality bins at sNN=27GeV and higher. At sNN=200GeV, the slope of the difference of v2 between π- and π+ as a function of Ach exhibits a centrality dependence, which is qualitatively similar to calculations that incorporate a chiral magnetic wave effect. Similar centrality dependence is also observed at lower energies.

© 2015 The Authors. Dihadron correlations are analyzed in √sNN = 200 GeV d + Au collisions classified by forward charged particle multiplicity and zero-degree neutral energy in the Au-beam direction. It is found that the jetlike correlated yield increases with the event multiplicity. After taking into account this dependence, the non-jet contribution on the away side is minimal, leaving little room for a back-to-back ridge in these collisions.

© 2015 The Authors. The acceptance-corrected dielectron excess mass spectra, where the known hadronic sources have been subtracted from the inclusive dielectron mass spectra, are reported for the first time at mid-rapidity |yee|<1 in minimum-bias Au+Au collisions at √sNN=19.6 and 200 GeV. The excess mass spectra are consistently described by a model calculation with a broadened ρ spectral function for Mee<1.1 GeV/c2. The integrated dielectron excess yield at √sNN=19.6 GeV for 0.4

© 2015 American Physical Society. Collisions between prolate uranium nuclei are used to study how particle production and azimuthal anisotropies depend on initial geometry in heavy-ion collisions. We report the two- and four-particle cumulants, v2{2} and v2{4}, for charged hadrons from U+U collisions at sNN=193 GeV and Au+Au collisions at sNN=200 GeV. Nearly fully overlapping collisions are selected based on the energy deposited by spectators in zero degree calorimeters (ZDCs). Within this sample, the observed dependence of v2{2} on multiplicity demonstrates that ZDC information combined with multiplicity can preferentially select different overlap configurations in U+U collisions. We also show that v2 vs multiplicity can be better described by models, such as gluon saturation or quark participant models, that eliminate the dependence of the multiplicity on the number of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions.

© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved. One of the primary goals of nuclear physics is to understand the force between nucleons, which is a necessary step for understanding the structure of nuclei and how nuclei interact with each other. Rutherford discovered the atomic nucleus in 1911, and the large body of knowledge about the nuclear force that has since been acquired was derived from studies made on nucleons or nuclei. Although antinuclei up to antihelium-4 have been discovered and their masses measured, little is known directly about the nuclear force between antinucleons. Here, we study antiproton pair correlations among data collected by the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), where gold ions are collided with a centre-of-mass energy of 200 gigaelectronvolts per nucleon pair. Antiprotons are abundantly produced in such collisions, thus making it feasible to study details of the antiproton-antiproton interaction. By applying a technique similar to Hanbury Brown and Twiss intensity interferometry, we show that the force between two antiprotons is attractive. In addition, we report two key parameters that characterize the corresponding strong interaction: the scattering length and the effective range of the interaction. Our measured parameters are consistent within errors with the corresponding values for proton-proton interactions. Our results provide direct information on the interaction between two antiprotons, one of the simplest systems of antinucleons, and so are fundamental to understanding the structure of more-complex antinuclei and their properties.

© 2015 American Physical Society. ©2015 American Physical Society. We report on measurements of dielectron (e+e-) production in Au+Au collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 200 GeV per nucleon-nucleon pair using the STAR detector at BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Systematic measurements of the dielectron yield as a function of transverse momentum (pT) and collision centrality show an enhancement compared to a cocktail simulation of hadronic sources in the low invariant-mass region (Mee<1GeV/c2). This enhancement cannot be reproduced by the ρ-meson vacuum spectral function. In minimum-bias collisions, in the invariant-mass range of 0.30-0.76GeV/c2, integrated over the full pT acceptance, the enhancement factor is 1.76±0.06(stat.)±0.26(sys.)±0.29(cocktail). The enhancement factor exhibits weak centrality and pT dependence in STAR's accessible kinematic regions, while the excess yield in this invariant-mass region as a function of the number of participating nucleons follows a power-law shape with a power of 1.44±0.10. Models that assume an in-medium broadening of the ρ-meson spectral function consistently describe the observed excess in these measurements. Additionally, we report on measurements of ω- and φ-meson production through their e+e- decay channel. These measurements show good agreement with Tsallis blast-wave model predictions, as well as, in the case of the φ meson, results through its K+K- decay channel. In the intermediate invariant-mass region (1.1