English

Wigner functions of massive fermions in strong magnetic fields

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2018-04-04 v2

Abstract

We compute the covariant Wigner function for spin-1/2 fermions in an arbitrarily strong magnetic field by exactly solving the Dirac equation at non-zero fermion-number and chiral-charge densities. The Landau energy levels as well as a set of orthonormal eigenfunctions are found as solutions of the Dirac equation. With these orthonormal eigenfunctions we construct the fermion field operators and the corresponding Wigner-function operator. The Wigner function is obtained by taking the ensemble average of the Wigner-function operator in global thermodynamical equilibrium, i.e., at constant temperature TT and non-zero fermion-number and chiral-charge chemical potentials μ\mu and μ5\mu_5, respectively. Extracting the vector and axial-vector components of the Wigner function, we reproduce the currents of the chiral magnetic and separation effect in an arbitrarily strong magnetic field.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1707.01388,
  title  = {Wigner functions of massive fermions in strong magnetic fields},
  author = {Xin-li Sheng and Dirk H. Rischke and David Vasak and Qun Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.01388},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

RevTex 4, 15 pages, 2 figures; discussions about the degeneracy of the eigen-energy from p_x are added; to appear in EPJA