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+pp+p, d+Aud+Au collisions at sNN=200GeV and Au+AuAu+Au collisions at sNN=62.4GeV are used to develop the methods. The transverse momentum (pTpT) ranges of ππ, and p(p¯) identification are from ∼0.3GeV/c to ∼10GeV/c. The high pTpT reach is limited by statistics in current data sets. An important conceptual advance was developed to identify electrons by using a combination of dE/dxdE/dx in TPC and velocity information from the TOF detectors, which is important for future low-mass dilepton program at STAR.