The Chiral Magnetic Effect and chiral symmetry breaking in SU(3) quenched lattice gauge theory

TL;DR

This study investigates how strong magnetic fields influence the non-Abelian vacuum in quenched SU(3) lattice gauge theory, revealing enhanced chiral symmetry breaking, vacuum paramagnetism, and signs of the Chiral Magnetic Effect.

Contribution

It provides the first lattice gauge theory evidence of magnetic field-induced chiral symmetry breaking and local chirality fluctuations related to the CME in SU(3) theory.

Findings

Chiral condensate increases as a power law with magnetic field strength.

Vacuum exhibits paramagnetic behavior with measurable susceptibility.

Local chirality and current fluctuations grow with magnetic field, indicating CME presence.

Abstract

We study some properties of the non-Abelian vacuum induced by strong external magnetic field. We perform calculations in the quenched SU(3) lattice gauge theory with tadpole-improved Luscher-Weisz action and chirally invariant lattice Dirac operator. The following results are obtained: The chiral symmetry breaking is enhanced by the magnetic field. The chiral condensate depends on the strength of the applied field as a power function with exponent n = 1.6 +/- 0.2. There is a paramagnetic polarization of the vacuum. The corresponding susceptibility and other magnetic properties are calculated and compared with the theoretical estimations. There are non-zero local fluctuations of the chirality and electromagnetic current, which grow with the magnetic field strength. These fluctuations can be a manifestation of the Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME).