Dynamics of the Chiral Magnetic Effect in a weak magnetic field

TL;DR

This paper studies the real-time behavior of the chiral magnetic effect in QED and QCD under weak magnetic fields, using linear response theory to analyze electromagnetic currents and chirality production in specific field configurations.

Contribution

It introduces a method to compute the chiral magnetic effect dynamics in weak fields and extends to general situations, providing insights relevant for heavy ion collisions and laser experiments.

Findings

Computed electromagnetic current induced by the chiral magnetic effect.

Derived the chirality production rate for massive fermions in static fields.

Demonstrated the applicability of the methodology to various field configurations.

Abstract

We investigate the real-time dynamics of the chiral magnetic effect in quantum electrodynamics (QED) and quantum chromodynamics (QCD). We consider a field configuration of parallel (chromo)electric and (chromo)magnetic fields with a weak perpendicular electromagnetic magnetic field. The chiral magnetic effect induces an electromagnetic current along this perpendicular magnetic field, which we will compute using linear response theory. We discuss specific results for a homogeneous sudden switch-on and a pulsed (chromo)electric field in a static and homogeneous (chromo)magnetic field. Our methodology can be easily extended to more general situations. The results are useful for investigating the chiral magnetic effect with heavy ion collisions and with lasers that create strong electromagnetic fields. As a side result we obtain the rate of chirality production for massive fermions in parallel electric and magnetic fields that are static and homogeneous.