Recent highlights from the STAR Experiment

Abstract

Understanding the QCD phase structure and the possible existence of a critical point remains one of the central goals of the heavy-ion program at RHIC. In this proceeding, we present recent STAR results across multiple observables that probe different aspects of the hot and dense matter created in Au+Au collisions. These include two-particle transverse momentum correlations of mean transverse momentum, net-proton cumulants up to fourth order, identical-pion femtoscopy, and baryon-strangeness correlations. We also discuss femtoscopic measurements of baryon-baryon pairs, which provide insight into hyperon-nucleon and hyperon-hyperon interactions and the possible formation of strange dibaryon states. Together, these results provide complementary probes of the system's evolution across a wide collision-energy range (sqrt(sNN) = 3-200 GeV), offering new constraints on the QCD equation of state and the location of the QCD critical point.