2009/07/31 by P. V. Buividovich, M. N. Chernodub, E. V. Luschevskaya +2 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #hep-lat #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.80.054503
published as Phys.Rev.D80:054503,2009 · 14 pages, 14 figures, uses RevTeX 4.0; revision: references and comments added, figures corrected, published version
arxiv created 2009/09/03 · openalex publication_date 2009/09/21 · arxiv updated 2010/04/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The chiral magnetic effect is the generation of electric current of quarks along an external magnetic field in the background of topologically nontrivial gluon fields. There is recent evidence that this effect is observed by the STAR Collaboration in heavy-ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. In our paper we study qualitative signatures of the chiral magnetic effect using quenched lattice simulations. We find indications that the electric current is indeed enhanced in the direction of the magnetic field both in equilibrium configurations of the quantum gluon fields and in a smooth gluon background with nonzero topological charge. In the confinement phase the magnetic field enhances the local fluctuations of both the electric charge and chiral charge densities. In the deconfinement phase the effects of the magnetic field become smaller, possibly due to thermal screening. Using a simple model of a fireball we obtain a good agreement between our data and experimental results of STAR Collaboration.