English

Charge-dependent Flow Induced by Magnetic and Electric Fields in Heavy Ion Collisions

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2018-11-21 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory Nuclear Experiment Nuclear Theory

Abstract

We investigate the charge-dependent flow induced by magnetic and electric fields in heavy ion collisions. We simulate the evolution of the expanding cooling droplet of strongly coupled plasma hydrodynamically, using the iEBE-VISHNU framework, and add the magnetic and electric fields as well as the electric currents they generate in a perturbative fashion. We confirm the previously reported effect of the electromagnetically induced currents, that is a charge-odd directed flow Δv1\Delta v_1 that is odd in rapidity, noting that it is induced by magnetic fields (\`a la Faraday and Lorentz) and by electric fields (the Coulomb field from the charged spectators). In addition, we find a charge-odd Δv3\Delta v_3 that is also odd in rapidity and that has a similar physical origin. We furthermore show that the electric field produced by the net charge density of the plasma drives rapidity-even charge-dependent contributions to the radial flow pT\langle p_T \rangle and the elliptic flow Δv2\Delta v_2. Although their magnitudes are comparable to the charge-odd Δv1\Delta v_1 and Δv3\Delta v_3, they have a different physical origin, namely the Coulomb forces within the plasma.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1806.05288,
  title  = {Charge-dependent Flow Induced by Magnetic and Electric Fields in Heavy Ion Collisions},
  author = {Umut Gürsoy and Dmitri Kharzeev and Eric Marcus and Krishna Rajagopal and Chun Shen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1806.05288},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

35 pages, 17 figures; references added, cosmetic changes, version to appear in PRC