Status of CME Search Before Isobar Collisions and Methods of Blind Analysis From STAR

Abstract

The STAR collaboration is currently pursuing the blind analysis of the data for isobar collisions that was performed at RHIC in the year 2018 to make a decisive test of the Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME). Why is it so difficult to detect signals of CME in the experiment? Do we really understand different sources of background? Why observing similar charge separation between p/d+A and A+A does not stop us from pursuing the search for CME? In this contribution, I attempt to address some of these questions and briefly outline a few recent STAR analyses based on new methods and observables to isolate the possible CME-driven signal and non-CME background contributions at the top RHIC energy. Finally, I describe the procedure for the blind analysis of the isobar data. An outstanding question remains -- what happens if we go down in energy? I address this by discussing how the new event-plane detector (EPD) upgrade provides a new capability at STAR towards CME search using the data from the RHIC BES-II program.