As its name says, STAR is an experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. UC Davis is part of the STAR collaboration, which consists of more than 59 institutions over 12 nations (Full list).
STAR has a large solenoidal magnet which provides a very uniform magnetic field in the cylindrical volume inside the magnet. It has a tracking detector called a Time Projection Chamber, which allows us to record a 3-D picture of the tracks from the very high energy heavy ion collision. Thousands of charged particle tracks can be produced in a single collision event. A picture of a quarter-section of the STAR Time Projection Chamber is shown on this page, where some of the tracks can be seen.
Our group is actively engaged in:
Our group actively participates in the ongoing data-taking activities in STAR. We often travel to Brookhaven National Lab to perform shifts at the STAR experiment. The picture shows members of our group, together with other STAR colleagues, in the STAR control room during one of the data-taking runs.
