Highlights from the STAR experiment at RHIC

Abstract

Experiments using heavy ion collisions at ultrarelativistic energies aim to explore the QCD phase transition and map out the QCD phase diagram. A wealth of remarkable results in this field have been reported recently, for example the Upsilon suppression discovered recently. We discuss recent results from the STAR experiment focusing on strangeness, charm and beauty production.Comment: Presented at the International Conference on Strangeness in Quark Matter, 18-24 September 2011, Krakow, Polan