An Experimental Exploration of the QCD Phase Diagram: The Search for the Critical Point and the Onset of De-confinement
The QCD phase diagram lies at the heart of what the RHIC Physics Program is
all about. While RHIC has been operating very successfully at or close to its
maximum energy for almost a decade, it has become clear that this collider can
also be operated at lower energies down to 5 GeV without extensive upgrades. An
exploration of the full region of beam energies available at the RHIC facility
is imperative. The STAR detector, due to its large uniform acceptance and
excellent particle identification capabilities, is uniquely positioned to carry
out this program in depth and detail. The first exploratory beam energy scan
(BES) run at RHIC took place in 2010 (Run 10), since several STAR upgrades,
most importantly a full barrel Time of Flight detector, are now completed which
add new capabilities important for the interesting physics at BES energies. In
this document we discuss current proposed measurements, with estimations of the
accuracy of the measurements given an assumed event count at each beam energy.

title: The High Transverse Momentum Non-Photonic Electron Measurements in $Au+Au$ collisions at $\sqrt {S_{NN}} = 200$ GeV at RHIC/STAR
abstract: We present preliminary results of Non-Photonic Electron (NPE) production, NPE-hadron azimuthal correlation as well as NPE elliptic flow studies at midrapidity using a data set with high statistics and low photon conversion background from Au+Au collisions at √ sNN = 200 GeV collected at RHIC in Run 2010.

title: Observation of an energy-dependent difference in elliptic flow between particles and antiparticles in relativistic heavy ion collisions.
abstract: Elliptic flow (v(2)) values for identified particles at midrapidity in Au + Au collisions, measured by the STAR experiment in the beam energy scan at RHIC at sqrt[s(NN)] = 7.7-62.4 GeV, are presented. A beam-energy-dependent difference of the values of v(2) between particles and corresponding antiparticles was observed. The difference increases with decreasing beam energy and is larger for baryons compared to mesons. This implies that, at lower energies, particles and antiparticles are not consistent with the universal number-of-constituent-quark scaling of v(2) that was observed at sqrt[s(NN)] = 200 GeV.

title: Measurements of $D^{0}$ and $D^{*}$ Production in $p$ + $p$ Collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 200 GeV
abstract: We report measurements of charmed-hadron ($D^{0}$, $D^{*}$) production cross sections at mid-rapidity in $p$ + $p$ collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 200 GeV by the STAR experiment. Charmed hadrons were reconstructed via the hadronic decays $D^{0}\rightarrow K^{-}\pi^{+}$, $D^{*+}\rightarrow D^{0}\pi^{+}\rightarrow K^{-}\pi^{+}\pi^{+}$ and their charge conjugates, covering the $p_T$ range of 0.6$-$2.0 GeV/$c$ and 2.0$-$6.0 GeV/$c$ for $D^{0}$ and $D^{*+}$, respectively. From this analysis, the charm-pair production cross section at mid-rapidity is $d\sigma/dy|_{y=0}^{c\bar{c}}$ = 170 $\pm$ 45 (stat.) $^{+38}_{-59}$ (sys.) $\mu$b. The extracted charm-pair cross section is compared to perturbative QCD calculations. The transverse momentum differential cross section is found to be consistent with the upper bound of a Fixed-Order Next-to-Leading Logarithm calculation.

title: STAR measurements of bottom to charm ratio and heavy quark interaction with the QCD medium through non-photonic electron–hadron correlations
abstract: We present STAR measurements of relative charm and bottom contributions to non-photonic electrons (NPE) from p+p collisions at and 500 GeV energies. We report the total bottom quark production cross section from p+p collisions at GeV extracted from the NPE spectrum and B to D ratios. We also present the NPE-hadron azimuthal correlations from Au+Au collisions at GeV from the 2010 RHIC run where we have collected high statistics data set with low photonic conversion background.

title: Recent Heavy Flavor Results at RHIC
abstract: We summarize the recent experimental results of heavy favor physics from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in Brookhaven National Lab (BNL) at Long Island, New York, USA.We will discuss the directly reconstructed open charm mesons as well as electrons from heavy favor hadron decays. The charm and bottom quark production cross-sections have also been measured. We will also discuss JPsi and Upsilon states in p+p and heavy ion collisions. The studies described here were carried out and reported by the STAR and PHENIX collaborations at RHIC.

title: Vertex Operators of Open String States in the Intersecting D-brane World
abstract: Starting with a new bosonization scheme for the \beta\gamma CFT of the super-conformal ghosts, vertex operators are constructed for massless open string states in the intersecting D-brane world. These vertex operators satisfy all requirements for a consistent RNS formulation of superstring theories, so GSO projections can be properly taken.

title: Holographic model with a NS-NS field
abstract: We consider a holographic model constructed through using the D4/D8-$\overline{\rm D8}$ brane configuration with a background field. We study some properties of the effective field theory in this intersecting brane construction, and calculate the effects of this NS-NS background field on some underlying dynamics. We also discuss some other general brane configurations.

title: HOM identification by bead pulling in the Brookhaven ERL cavity
abstract: Exploratory measurements of the Brookhaven Energy Recovery Linac (ERL) cavity at superconducting temperature produced a long list of high order modes (HOMs). The niobium 5-cell cavity is terminated at each end with HOM ferrite dampers that successfully reduce the Q -factors to levels required to avoid beam break up (BBU) instabilities. However, a number of un-damped resonances with Q ≥10 6 were found at 4 K and their mode identification forms the focus of this paper. The approach taken here consists of bead pulling on a copper (Cu) replica of the ERL cavity with dampers involving various network analyzer measurements. Several different S 21 transmission measurements are used, including those taken from the fundamental input coupler to the pick-up probe across the cavity, others between beam-position monitor probes in the beam tubes, and also between probes placed into the cells. The bead pull technique suitable for HOM identification with a metallic needle or dielectric bead is detailed. This paper presents the results for HOMs in the first two dipole bands, the un-damped modes in the first quadrupole band, and the identification of several high- Q modes beyond.

title: Critical phenomena of static charged AdS black holes in conformal gravity
abstract: The extended thermodynamics of static charged AdS black holes in conformal gravity is analyzed. The P–V criticality of these black holes has some unusual features. There exists a single critical point with critical temperature Tc and critical pressure Pc. At fixed T>Tc (or at fixed P>Pc), there are two zeroth order phase transition points but no first order phase transition points. The systems favors large pressure states at constant T, or high temperature states at constant P.

title: Three dimensional rotating hairy black holes, asymptotics and thermodynamics
abstract: A rotating hairy black hole solution is found in gravity minimally coupled to a self-interacting real scalar field in three spacetime dimensions. Then we discuss analytically the horizon structure and find an analogue of the famous Kerr bound in (2+1) dimensions because of the existence of black hole horizons. We present the asymptotic symmetries and find the same symmetry group (i.e. the conformal group) and central charge as in pure gravity. Based on the asymptotic behavior, the mass and angular momentum are presented by the Regge-Teitelboim approach. Other thermodynamic quantities are also obtained and the first law of black hole thermodynamics and Smarr relation are checked. In addition, we also investigate the local thermodynamic stability and find the existence of Hawking-Page phase transition in the rotating hairy black hole.