Azimuthal charged particle correlations as a probe for local strong parity violation in heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

One of the most interesting and important phenomena predicted to occur in heavy-ion collisions is the local strong parity violation. In non-central collisions, it is expected to result in charge separation of produced particles along the system's orbital momentum. I report on results of the charge separation measurement in Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions at sqrt(s_NN)= 200 and 62 GeV with the STAR detector at RHIC based on three-particle mixed harmonic azimuthal correlations. Systematic study of parity conserving (background) effects with existing heavy-ion event generators, and their possible contributions to the observed correlations are also present.