English

Magnetohydrodynamics and charged currents in heavy ion collisions

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2015-06-22 v1 Nuclear Theory

Abstract

The hot QCD matter produced in any heavy ion collision with a nonzero impact parameter is produced within a strong magnetic field. We study the imprint the magnetic fields produced in non-central heavy ion collisions leave on the azimuthal distributions and correlations of the produced charged hadrons. The magnetic field is time-dependent and the medium is expanding, which leads to the induction of charged currents due to the combination of Faraday and Hall effects. We find that these currents result in a charge-dependent directed flow v1v_1 that is odd in rapidity and odd under charge exchange. It can be detected by measuring correlations between the directed flow of charged hadrons at different rapidities, v1±(y1)v1±(y2)\langle v_1^\pm (y_1) v_1^\pm (y_2) \rangle.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1408.4173,
  title  = {Magnetohydrodynamics and charged currents in heavy ion collisions},
  author = {Umut Gursoy and Dmitri Kharzeev and Krishna Rajagopal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1408.4173},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

Contribution to the Proceedings of the Quark Matter 2014 conference; talk given by U. Gursoy