Towards π±, K±, p/ ̄p hadron productionmeasurements in fixed target collisions withSTAR

One of the main physics goals of the Beam Energy Scan (BES) pro-

gram at RHIC is to study the QCD phase diagram, especially around the

phase transition between the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) and hadronic

matter. BES Phase-I studied Au+Au collisions from center-of-mass en-

ergy (√sNN ) of 7.7 to 62.4 GeV. The BES Phase-II extended these mea-

surements in several important ways, one of which was the addition of

a fixed target program that pushed the collision energy reach down to

3.0 GeV (or baryon chemical potential, μB up to 720 MeV). Fixed target

collisions at STAR allow for a more extensive scanning of the QCD phase

diagram to an important region where the QCD critical point may lie,

and to a region dominated by dense baryonic matter. The production of

light-flavor hadrons are sensitive to the properties and dynamic evolution

of the formed hot QCD medium. Therefore, the detailed measurements of

their productions can provide strong constraints on the theoretical mod-

els of QCD, and may eventually help to reveal the location of the QCD

critical point. In this talk, the key detector validation checks towards

such hadron production measurements are presented, including the com-

parisons of hadron yields in the same kinematic region but using different

particle identification systems.