English

Chiral Magnetic Spiral

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2010-11-11 v1 High Energy Physics - Theory Nuclear Theory

Abstract

We argue that the presence of a very strong magnetic field in the chirally broken phase induces inhomogeneous expectation values, of a spiral nature along the magnetic field axis, for the currents of charge and chirality, when there is finite baryon density or an imbalance between left and right chiralities. This "chiral magnetic spiral" is a gapless excitation transporting the currents of (i) charge (at finite chirality), and (ii) chirality (at finite baryon density) along the direction of the magnetic field. In both cases it also induces in the transverse directions oscillating currents of charge and chirality. In heavy ion collisions, the chiral magnetic spiral possibly provides contributions both to the out-of-plane and the in-plane dynamical charge fluctuations recently observed at RHIC.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1003.3464,
  title  = {Chiral Magnetic Spiral},
  author = {Gokce Basar and Gerald V. Dunne and Dmitri E. Kharzeev},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1003.3464},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

4 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T14:59:09.325Z