Extensive particle identification with TPC and TOF at the STAR experiment

Particle identification (PID) capabilities are studied by using the Time Projection Chamber (TPC) and a Time-Of-Flight (TOF) detector together at STAR. The identification capability of charged hadrons is greatly extended compared with that achieved by TPC and TOF separately. Particle spectra from p + p, d + Au collisions at root S-NN = 200 GeV and Au + Au collisions at root S-NN = 62.4 GeV are used to develop the methods. The transverse momentum ()T) ranges of pi, and p(p) identification are from similar to 0.3GeV/c to similar to 10GeV/c. The high p(T) reach is limited by statistics in current data sets. An important conceptual advance was developed to identify electrons by using a combination of dE/dx in TPC and velocity information from the TOF detectors, which is important for future low-mass dilepton program at STAR. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.