Experimental study of local strong parity violation in relativistic nuclear collisions

Understand

Parity-odd domains, corresponding to non-trivial topological solutions of the QCD vacuum, might be created in relativistic heavy ions collisions.

• These domains are predicted to lead to charge separation along the system orbital momentum of the system created in non-central collisions.
• Three-particle mixed harmonics azimuthal correlator is a \P even observable but directly sensitive to the charge separation effect.
• Using this observable to analyze Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ and 62 GeV, STAR detects a signal consistent with several of the theoretical expectations.