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    Search for the chiral magnetic effect through beam energy dependence of charge separation using event shape selection

    B. E. Aboona59, J. Adam17, G. Agakishiev32, I. Aggarwal45, M. M. Aggarwal45, Z. Ahammed66, A. Aitbayev32, I. Alekseev3,41, E. Alpatov41 et al. (STAR Collaboration)

    E. Alpatov41, A. K. Alshammri33, A. Aparin32, S. Aslam21, J. Atchison2, G. S. Averichev32, V. Bairathi57, X. Bao53, P. Barik26, K. Barish12, S. Behera27, P. Bhagat31, A. Bhasin31, S. Bhatta56, I. G. Bordyuzhin3, J. D. Brandenburg44, A. V. Brandin41, C. Broodo24, X. Z. Cai54, H. Caines70, M. Calderón de la Barca Sánchez10, D. Cebra10, J. Ceska17, I. Chakaberia36, Y. S. Chang47, Z. Chang29, A. Chatterjee18, D. Chen12, J. H. Chen21, Q. Chen22, W. Chen21, Z. Chen53, J. Cheng62, Y. Cheng11, W. Christie7, X. Chu7, S. Corey44, H. J. Crawford9, G. Dale-Gau17, A. Das17, D. De Souza Lemos7, T. G. Dedovich32, I. M. Deppner23, A. A. Derevschikov46, A. Deshpande56, A. Dhamija45, A. Dimri56, P. Dixit21, X. Dong36, J. L. Drachenberg2, E. Duckworth33, J. C. Dunlop7, Y. S. El-Feky5, J. Engelage9, G. Eppley48, S. Esumi63, O. Evdokimov14, O. Eyser7, B. Fan13, R. Fatemi34, S. Fazio8, H. Feng13, Y. Feng13, E. Finch55, Y. Fisyak7, F. A. Flor70, C. Fu30, T. Fu53, T. Gao53, Y. Gao21, G. Garcia7, F. Geurts48, A. Gibson65, A. Giri24, K. Gopal27, X. Gou53, D. Grosnick65, A. Gu25, J. Gu21, A. Gupta31, A. Hamed5, R. J. Hamilton70, J. Han13, X. Han44, M. D. Harasty10, J. W. Harris70, H. Harrison-Smith34, L. B. Havener70, X. H. He30, Y. He53, C. Hu64, Q. Hu30, Y. Hu36, H. Huang1,43, H. Z. Huang11, S. L. Huang56, T. Huang14, Y. Huang19, Y. Huang30, Y. Huang21, M. Isshiki63, W. W. Jacobs29, A. Jalotra31, C. Jena27, Y. Ji36, J. Jia56,7, X. Jiang13, C. Jin48, Y. Jin13, N. Jindal44, X. Ju50, E. G. Judd9, S. Kabana57, D. Kalinkin34, J. Kang52, K. Kang62, A. R. Kanuganti7, D. Kapukchyan12, K. Kauder7, D. Keane33, A. Kechechyan32, M. Kesler33, A. Khanal68, J. Kim7, A. Kiselev7, A. G. Knospe37, L. Kochenda41, A. A. Korobitsin32, B. Korodi44, A. Yu. Kraeva41, P. Kravtsov41, L. Kumar45, M. C. Labonte10, R. Lacey56, J. M. Landgraf7, C. Larson34, A. Lebedev7, R. Lednicky32, J. H. Lee7, Y. H. Leung23, C. Li13, D. Li50, H-S. Li47, H. Li69, H. Li22, H. Li13, W. Li48, X. Li50, X. Li50, Y. Li62, Z. Li51, Z. Li50, X. Liang12, T. Lin53, Y. Lin22, C. Liu30, G. Liu51, H. Liu25, L. Liu13, L. Liu21, Z. Liu21, Z. Liu13, T. Ljubicic48, O. Lomicky17, E. M. Loyd12, T. Lu30, J. Luo50, X. F. Luo13, V. B. Luong32, L. Ma21, R. Ma7, Y. G. Ma21, N. Magdy60, R. Manikandhan24, O. Matonoha17, K. Mi64, N. G. Minaev46, B. Mohanty42, B. Mondal42, M. M. Mondal38, I. Mooney70, D. A. Morozov46, M. I. Nagy19, C. J. Naim56, A. S. Nain45, J. D. Nam58, M. Nasim26, H. Nasrulloh50, E. Nedorezov32, J. M. Nelson9, M. Nie53, G. Nigmatkulov14, T. Niida63, L. V. Nogach46, T. Nonaka63, G. Odyniec36, A. Ogawa7, S. Oh52, V. A. Okorokov41, K. Okubo63, B. S. Page7, S. Pal17, A. Pandav36, A. Panday26, A. K. Pandey67, Y. Panebratsev32, T. Pani49, P. Parfenov41, A. Paul12, S. Paul56, C. Perkins9, S. Ping21, B. R. Pokhrel58, I. D. Ponce Pinto70, M. Posik58, E. Pottebaum70, A. Povarov41, S. Prodhan27, T. L. Protzman37, N. K. Pruthi45, J. Putschke68, Y. Qi13, Z. Qin62, H. Qiu30, C. Racz12, S. K. Radhakrishnan33, A. Rana45, R. L. Ray61, C. W. Robertson47, O. V. Rogachevsky32, M. A. Rosales Aguilar34, D. Roy49, L. Ruan7, A. K. Sahoo26, N. R. Sahoo27, H. Sako63, S. Salur49, S. S. Sambyal31, E. Samigullin3, J. K. Sandhu37, S. Sato63, B. C. Schaefer37, N. Schmitz39, J. Seger16, R. Seto12, P. Seyboth39, N. Shah28, E. Shahaliev32, P. V. Shanmuganathan7, T. Shao21, M. Sharma31, N. Sharma26, R. Sharma27, S. R. Sharma27, A. I. Sheikh33, D. Shen53, D. Y. Shen30, K. Shen50, S. Shi13, Y. Shi53, E. Shulga7, F. Si50, J. Singh57, S. Singha30, P. Sinha27, M. J. Skoby47,6, Y. Söehngen23, Y. Song70, T. D. S. Stanislaus65, M. Strikhanov41, Y. Su50, X. Sun30, Y. Sun50, B. Surrow58, D. N. Svirida3, Z. W. Sweger10, A. C. Tamis70, A. H. Tang7, Z. Tang50, A. Taranenko41, T. Tarnowsky40, J. H. Thomas36, A. Timofeev32, D. Tlusty16, M. V. Tokarev32, D. Torres Valladares48, S. Trentalange11, P. Tribedy7, O. D. Tsai11,7, C. Y. Tsang33,7, Z. Tu7, J. E. Tyler59, T. Ullrich7, D. G. Underwood4,65, G. Van Buren7, A. N. Vasiliev41,46, F. Videbaek7, S. Vokal32, S. A. Voloshin68, G. Wang11, G. Wang13, J. S. Wang25, J. Wang53, K. Wang50, X. Wang53, Y. Wang50, Y. Wang13, Y. Wang62, Z. Wang21, Z. Wang53, J. C. Webb7, P. C. Weidenkaff23, G. D. Westfall40, H. Wieman36, G. Wilks14, S. W. Wissink29, C. P. Wong7, J. Wu64, X. Wu11, X. Wu50, X. Wu13, B. Xi21, Y. Xiao21, Z. G. Xiao62, G. Xie64, W. Xie47, H. Xu25, N. Xu13, Q. H. Xu53, Y. Xu53, Y. Xu21, Y. Xu13, Y. Xu30, Z. Xu33, Z. Xu4, G. Yan53, Z. Yan56, C. Yang53, Q. Yang53, S. Yang51, Y. Yang1,43, Z. Ye51, Z. Ye36, L. Yi53, Y. Yu53, W. Zha50, C. Zhang21, D. Zhang51, J. Zhang53, L. Zhang13, S. Zhang15, W. Zhang51, X. Zhang30, Y. Zhang30, Y. Zhang50, Y. Zhang53, Y. Zhang22, Z. Zhang7, Z. Zhang14, F. Zhao35, J. Zhao21, S. Zhou13, Y. Zhou13, X. Zhu62, M. Zurek4,7, and M. Zyzak20 (STAR Collaboration)

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    Phys. Rev. C 113, 014912 – Published 23 January, 2026

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/pj7s-9ym7

    Abstract

    High-energy, heavy-ion collisions can create local domains of chirality-imbalanced quarks, reflecting the topological features of quantum chromodynamics. The chiral magnetic effect (CME) predicts an electric charge separation of quarks in such topological domains along the magnetic field (B⃗) generated by the passing of two high-Z nuclei. We use a correlation observable Δγ112 between charged meson pairs to detect the CME-induced charge separation and a novel event shape selection (ESS) method to mitigate the background effects related to elliptic flow (v2). The ESS method classifies events based on the emission pattern of final-state particles and determines ΔγESS112 from the zero-flow limit. We reconstruct the B⃗ field direction from the spectator nucleons, which minimizes backgrounds unrelated to the collective motion of the system. In this work, we report the measurements of Δγ112 and a background indicator Δγ132 in Au+Au collisions from the Brookhaven National Laboratory Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) Beam Energy Scan phase II and at the top RHIC energy. After background suppression, ΔγESS132 aligns with zero, and ΔγESS112 is reduced to no more than 20% of Δγ112. We observe a finite residual charge separation with 2.5σ, 3σ, and 3.2σ significance in the 20–50% centrality range of Au+Au collisions at 11.5, 14.6, and 19.6 GeV. The results at 17.3 and 27 GeV also show positive values but with a lower significance of 1.3σ and 1.1σ, respectively. The corresponding ΔγESS112 values at 7.7, 9.2, and 200 GeV are consistent with zero within uncertainties.

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    Phys. Rev. C 113, 014912– Published 23 January, 2026
    • Received 2 June 2025
    • Revised 3 September 2025
    • Accepted 13 November 2025
    Article part of CHORUS
    Accepted manuscript will be available starting 23 January, 2027.
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