Strong enhancement of production of strange particles, and in particular of [phi] mesons, in heavy ion collisions of sufficiently high energies has been predicted to be an indication of a formation of a new state of matter, composed of deconfined quarks and gluons and having a property of chiral symmetry, called Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP). Studying production of [phi] mesons is of special interest due to their small cross-section of interaction with non-strange hadrons and due to their long lifetime, which should allow [phi] mesons to decouple from the strongly interacting medium produced in heavy ion collisions early in time and to escape the medium before decaying, thereby preserving information about the conditions in which the mesons were produced. In addition, the decay properties of [phi] mesons have been predicted to be modified in a hadronic gas medium. The [phi] -> K+K~ decay is of particular interest since the mass of a [phi] meson in vacuum is very close to the mass of two charged kaons, and consequently, even a small change in the mass or the width of [phi] mesons or in the mass of kaons would have a strong effect on the decay properties. Measurement of [phi] meson production using the PHOBOS detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has proven to be especially challenging due to a small acceptance of the PHOBOS spectrometer and due to a much lower than predicted yield of [phi] mesons in heavy ion collisions at the highest RHIC energy. The measurement required a development of a new tracking algorithm, specifically tailored to reconstruct charged kaons with a high efficiency in a high hit density environment, keeping at the same time the necessary computing time within feasible limits. Results of a measurement of [phi] meson invariant yield in the rapidity interval 0 y

The inclusive kappa production cross sections were measured at angles from 15 to 80° in collisions of protons (2.1 GeV) and deuterons (2.1 GeV/amu) on NaF and Pb, and Ne (2.1 GeV/amu) on C, NaF, KCl, Cu, and Pb. The kaons were identified by measuring the time of flight and the momentum in a magnetic spectrometer, and by detecting the particles from the kaon decays in a Pb glass Cerenkov counter. The momentum range of the detected kaons extended from 350 MeV/c to 750 MeV/c. The multiplicity of each event was measured by a set of scintillation counter telescopes which were situated around the target. The differential cross section of the kaons falls off exponentially with center of mass energy in the nucleon nucleon center of mass frame. In addition, the angular distribution of the kaons is nearly isotropic in this frame even for p−1 NaF and Ne−1 Pb collisions. The data are compared with a row on row model and a thermal model. Neither are able to explain all features of the data. The row on row model does not reproduce the near isotropy in the nucleon nucleon frame, and the thermal model overpredicts the kaon yield by a factor of approximately twenty.

Ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collision produces an extremely hot and dense medium of de-confined quarks and gluons, which is called Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). The STAR detector at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) provides powerful experimental capabilities to probe the properties of this new form of matter, as well as novel quantum effects induced by the restoration of fundamental symmetry in qauntum-chromdynamics (QCD). Towards these goals, two research projects have been carried out at STAR/RHIC and will be presented in this thesis: 1) Measurement of mid-rapidity ($|y|0.5$) multi-strangenss particle ($\Omega$ and $\phi$) production in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=14.5$ GeV; 2) A systematic search for chiral effects using identified particle correlation. Production mechanism for strange hadrons could be dramatically different in the presence of QGP compared to regular $pp$ collisions. Thus strangeness signal is used extensively in Beam Energy Scan I (BES-I) program at RHIC to map out the phase diagram of QCD matter. As a part of BES-I, gold nuclei are collided at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 14.5$ GeV and the productions of mid-rapidity $\Omega(sss)$ and $\phi(\bar{s}s)$ are measured for the collisions. The ratio of anti-omega ($\bar{\Omega}$) over omega ($\Omega^-$) is calculated and used to extract thermodynamics parameters ($\mu_B/T$ and $\mu_S/T$) of collision system via statistical model. Additionally, the transverse momentum ($p_T$) dependence of nuclear modification factor ($R_{cp}$) is measured for $\phi$ meson and the result shows similar feature to energies lower than 19.6 GeV. As a test of coalescence formation mechanism for strange hadrons, $\textrm{N}(\Omega^-+\bar{\Omega}^+)/2(\textrm{N}(\phi))$ as a function of $p_T$ is studied and the data from central collision is found to deviate from model calculation and higher energy ($\sqrt{s_{NN}}19.6$ GeV) results in $p_T$ range from $2.0-3.0$ GeV/c, which may imply a transition of created medium whose underlying dominant degrees of freedom change from quarks/gluons to hadrons as collision energy goes below 19.6 GeV. %whose underlying dominant degrees of freedom change from quarks/gluons to hadrons as... With excellent particle identification capability of STAR, a systematic search for the Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME) via measurements of $\gamma_{112}$ correlation and $\kappa_K$ parameter for identified particle pairs ($\pi\pi$, $pK$, $\pi K$, $pp$, $p\pi$) in Au+Au collisions has been conducted. The $\kappa_K$ results are compared to expectations from the \textit{A Multi-Phase Transport Model} (AMPT) simulations. Except $\pi\pi$ and $pp$ correlations, the CME signals from other particle pairs are consistent with background model. $\kappa_K$ from $\pi\pi$ shows higher values than background expectation, while the result for $pp$ is even lower than the background, which requires further investigation. %A study of $\gamma_{112}$ and $\delta$ correlations for $\Lambda p$ in Au+Au 27 GeV shows that in mid-central and mid-peripheral collisions, baryon numbers are separated across reaction plane, which is consistent with the Chiral Vortical Effect (CVE) expectation. To search for Chiral Vortical Effect (CVE), a measurement of $\gamma_{112}$ and $\delta$ correlations for $\Lambda p$ pairs in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=27$ GeV was carried out and the results show that the CVE induced baryon number separation may exist in mid-central and mid-peripheral collisions with little contamination from flowing resonance decay background. Future development of searches for the chirality effect in heavy ion collisions will also be discussed.