Chiral vortical wave and induced flavor charge transport in a rotating quark-gluon plasma

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Chiral Vortical Wave (CVW), a new gapless excitation in rotating chiral fluids, arising from quantum anomalies, and explores its implications for flavor charge transport in quark-gluon plasma.

Contribution

It identifies and characterizes the CVW, deriving its wave equation from hydrodynamics and kinetic theory, and predicts measurable effects in heavy ion collision experiments.

Findings

Existence of the Chiral Vortical Wave in rotating chiral fluids.

Induced flavor quadrupole formation in quark-gluon plasma.

Potential experimental observation of elliptic flow splitting in Lambda baryons.

Abstract

We show the existence of a new gapless collective excitation in a rotating fluid system with chiral fermions, named as the Chiral Vortical Wave (CVW). The CVW has its microscopic origin at the quantum anomaly and macroscopically arises from interplay between vector and axial charge fluctuations induced by vortical effects. The wave equation is obtained both from hydrodynamic current equations and from chiral kinetic theory and its solutions show nontrivial CVW-induced charge transport from different initial conditions. Using the rotating quark-gluon plasma in heavy ion collisions as a concrete example, we show the formation of induced flavor quadrupole in QGP and estimate the elliptic flow splitting effect for Lambda baryons that may be experimentally measured.