Hydrodynamic modes in a magnetized chiral plasma with vorticity

TL;DR

This paper develops a hydrodynamic framework for magnetized rotating chiral plasmas, revealing how electromagnetic effects influence wave spectra and damping, with implications for high-temperature and high-density regimes.

Contribution

It introduces a covariant chiral kinetic theory-based hydrodynamics for magnetized rotating plasmas and analyzes their wave modes under realistic boundary conditions.

Findings

Electromagnetic effects significantly alter wave spectra.

Sound and Alfvén waves dominate at high temperature.

Plasmons and helicons are prominent at high density.

Abstract

By making use of a covariant formulation of the chiral kinetic theory in the relaxation-time approximation, we derive the first-order dissipative hydrodynamics equations for a charged chiral plasma with background electromagnetic fields. We identify the global equilibrium state for a rotating chiral plasma confined to a cylindrical region with realistic boundary conditions. Then, by using linearized hydrodynamic equations, supplemented by the Maxwell equations, we study hydrodynamic modes of magnetized rotating chiral plasma in the regimes of high temperature and high density. We find that, in both regimes, dynamical electromagnetism has profound effects on the spectrum of propagating modes. In particular, there are only the sound and Alfv\'en waves in the regime of high temperature, and the plasmons and helicons at high density. We also show that the chiral magnetic wave is universally overdamped because of high electrical conductivity in plasma that causes an efficient screening of charge fluctuations. The physics implications of the main results are briefly discussed.