Nonlinear electromagnetic response in quark-gluon plasma

TL;DR

This paper systematically studies the nonlinear electromagnetic currents in quark-gluon plasma under different electromagnetic field inhomogeneity conditions, revealing the comparable magnitude of chiral magnetic and quadratic currents.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of nonlinear electromagnetic responses in quark-gluon plasma, including classification and explicit calculation of currents.

Findings

Quadratic current can be of the same order as the chiral magnetic current.

Classification of electromagnetic current components in different regimes.

Explicit calculation of quadratic current using Vlasov equation.

Abstract

We perform the first systematic study of the nonlinear electromagnetic currents induced by external electromagnetic field in quark-gluon plasma, both in the two cases that the inhomogeneity of electromagnetic field is small (large) so that the collision effect is important (negligible). In the former case, we list and classify possible components of the currents in a systematic way, and make an order estimate of each component by using the Boltzmann equation in the relaxation time approximation. In the latter case, we explicitly calculate the quadratic current by using the Vlasov equation, and find that the current generated by the chiral magnetic effect and the quadratic current can have the same order of magnitude by using the Kadanoff-Baym equation. We also demonstrate this property by using a possible configuration of electromagnetic field realized in heavy ion collision.