Magnetic field in nuclear collisions at ultra high energies
V. A. Okorokov (National Research Nuclear University MEPhI)

TL;DR
This study models the magnetic fields generated in ultra high energy proton-proton and nucleus-nucleus collisions, showing rapid decay over time and dependence on atomic number, with implications for phenomena like W boson condensation.
Contribution
It provides detailed estimations of magnetic field strengths in ultra high energy collisions using different charge distribution models, highlighting the impact of nuclear size and collision energy.
Findings
Magnetic field reaches tens of GeV$^{2}$ immediately after collision.
Field strength decreases rapidly with time.
Field amplitude increases with atomic number.
Abstract
The magnetic field created in proton-proton and nucleus-nucleus collisions at ultra high energies are studied with models of point-like charges and hard sphere for distribution of the constituents for vacuum conditions. The various beam ions are considered from light to heavy nuclei at energies corresponded to the nominal energies of proton beam within the projects of further accelerator facilities high-energy Large Hadron Collider (HE-LHC) and Future Circular Collider (FCC). The magnetic field strength immediately after collisions reaches the value tens of GeV while the approach with point-like charges some overestimate the amplitude of the field in comparison with more realistic hard sphere model. The absolute value of magnetic field rapidly decrease with time and increases with growth of atomic number. The amplitude for is estimated at level GeV in order to…
| Parameter | Incoming particle | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| , TeV | 13.50 | 6.750 | 6.075 | 6.750 | 6.231 | 5.651 | 5.322 |
| 50.00 | 25.00 | 22.50 | 25.00 | 23.08 | 20.93 | 19.71 | |
| 10.31 | 9.576 | 9.472 | 9.576 | 9.492 | 9.396 | 9.341 | |
| 11.51 | 10.82 | 10.77 | 10.82 | 10.58 | 10.73 | 10.70 | |
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Magnetic field in nuclear collisions at ultra high energies
V. A. Okorokov
[email protected]; [email protected]
National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), Kashirskoe highway 31, 115409 Moscow, Russia
Abstract
The magnetic field created in proton-proton and nucleus–nucleus collisions at ultra high energies are studied with models of point-like charges and hard sphere for distribution of the constituents for vacuum conditions. The various beam ions are considered from light to heavy nuclei at energies corresponded to the nominal energies of proton beam within the projects of further accelerator facilities high–energy Large Hadron Collider (HE–LHC) and Future Circular Collider (FCC). The magnetic field strength immediately after collisions reaches the value tens of GeV2 while the approach with point-like charges some overestimate the amplitude of the field in comparison with more realistic hard sphere model. The absolute value of magnetic field rapidly decrease with time and increases with growth of atomic number. The amplitude for is estimated at level GeV2 in order to magnitude for quark-quark collisions at energies corresponded to the nominal energies of proton beams. These estimations are close to the range for onset of boson condensation.
pacs:
25.75.-q, 25.75.Nq
I Introduction
According to the Biot–Savart law the current, i.e. moving charge, create magnetic field (). Therefore the collisions of charged particles in human made accelerator facilities or in cosmic rays generate the magnetic field which strength can achieves very large value. This field appears just after collision moment and, consequently, can influence on all stages of space-time evolution of final-state system. The influence of and corresponding electric filed () can be essential for phase diagram of the matter created in final state and for transition processes at sufficiently large strength of this external Abelian (electro)magnetic field. Also it can lead to some new features for dynamics of multiparticle production. In general the maximum of the absolute value will increase with growth of the energy of incoming particles and, consequently, it can be expected the amplification of the influence of (electro)magnetic field on the various properties of the final state in the domain of very high energies. As consequence, the study of possible influence of external Abelian (electro)magnetic field created in the collisions of relativistic particles on the interaction process is important for both the strong interaction and the electroweak sector. Collisions of particles with ultra relativistic energies provide a unique possibility to study the wide set of physical effects related to the very strong electromagnetic fields at controlled conditions. On the other hand, such investigations can shed new light on the physical mechanisms that may have produced magnetic fields in the early Universe. Therefore, studies of the extremely strong electromagnetic field in particle collisions with ultra high energies can be important for physics of fundamental interactions, cosmology, and relativistic astrophysics, i.e., they have an interdisciplinary value.
II Definitions and notations
In this section some essential kinematic parameters for collider beams and approach for magnetic field study are considered.
II.1 Models for magnetic field
In the simplest approach one can assume like in PLB-377-135-1996 that the colliding objects are point-like particles with charges , where is the magnitude of electron charge. Lets the objects move along the axis at impact parameter . Then time evolution of at the center of the collision can be described by the following equation PRD-80-034028-2009
[TABLE]
Here is the electromagnetic constant and is the rapidity of incoming particles in the center-of-mass system. In relativistic energy domain () the relations result in
[TABLE]
where , , and is the momentum, Lorentz factor, velocity along the axis, and mass of incoming particle in the frame considered; is standard Mandelstam invariant variable.
Magnetic field at a point created by an object (proton / nucleus) with finite size and a charge , moving in the positive () direction of the axis from the starting point of the transverse plane , can be obtained either with help of appropriate conversation of electric field of a given charged object, or on the basis of the Linard–Wihert potentials NPA-803-227-2008 . In this work the magnetic field created immediately after the collision is studied, i.e. at times , where is the collision moment. Therefore can be written as follows NPA-803-227-2008 :
[TABLE]
where , are the contributions of magnetic fields from the spectator constituents () and participating constituents (), moving in the positive (negative) direction of the axis. The contributions from spectators and participants can be estimated with help of the following equations NPA-803-227-2008
[TABLE]
Here is the rapidity of spectator / participants in the laboratory reference frame, which is coincide with the center-of-mass system for collider beams, and is proper time and space-time rapidity, is the constituent density. It is considered that spectators do not (re)scatter and continue to move along the axis with after the interaction, i.e. . Within the hypothesis about negligible contribution of the newly produced particles to the NPA-803-227-2008 the function , is entered to account for contributions only from presented in the initial state, where based on available experimental data PLB-378-238-1996 .
In relativistic energy domain the Lorentz factor and colliding objects (proton / nucleus) are strongly contracted in the longitudinal () direction of their original size, where is the nucleon mass PDG-PRD-98-030001-2018 . Therefore in the simple approximation ”hard sphere” the constituent density is defined as \rho_{\pm}(\vec{x}^{\,{}^{\prime}}_{\perp})=3\bigl{[}R^{2}-(\vec{x}^{\,{}^{\prime}}_{\perp}\pm\vec{b}/2)^{2}\bigr{]}^{1/2}\,\theta_{\pm}(\vec{x}^{\,{}^{\prime}}_{\perp})\,/\,(2\pi R^{3}) for the charged object moving in a positive (negative) direction along the axis, where normalization is the following and \theta_{\pm}(\vec{x}^{\,{}^{\prime}}_{\perp})=\theta\bigl{[}R^{2}-(\vec{x}^{\,{}^{\prime}}_{\perp}\pm\vec{b}/2)^{2}\bigr{]} are the projections of the colliding objects on the transverse plane with respect to the beam axis, is the step function used for splitting and in the approach considered, is the radius of the beam object (proton / nucleus). Fig. 1 shows in detailed the collision geometry and parameters used for calculation of with help of (2).
Within the hard sphere approach and in the center of the secondary particle source, i.e. in the center of the overlap region ( and ), the magnetic field points along the axis: NPA-803-227-2008 ; Okorokov-arXiv-0908.2522-2009 . This statement agrees well with the averaged results of event-by-event numerical calculations for various nucleus-nucleus collisions. The improvement of estimation of the provides the following analytic approximation Okorokov-YaFE-4-805-2013 :
[TABLE]
which is valid for proper time range with and . In (4) the first term corresponds to the contribution of and the second one – to the contribution of spectators , , , the function is calculated numerically NPA-803-227-2008 . At high energies and it can be derived the following analytic expressions for limit values of the magnetic filed within the approximation (4):
[TABLE]
It should be noted that the analytic equations (1) and (4) deduced within point charge and hard sphere approaches do not take into account any possible modifications due to matter produced in the final state, i.e. the models used here corresponds to the in vacuum.
II.2 Beam characteristics
In the present paper the energies are considered for the following international projects: the novel research infrastructure based on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which extends the current energy frontier by almost a factor 2 is called the high-energy Large Hadron Collider (HE–LHC) project FCC-CDR-V4-2018 and the integrated accelerator facility in a global context is called the Future Circular Collider (FCC) project which contains the work mode (FCC–hh) with proton and nuclei beams FCC-CDR-V3-2018 . Both projects are essential part for the next update of the European strategy for particle physics. The nominal energy for proton–proton collision within the HE–LHC project is TeV FCC-CDR-V4-2018 and TeV for the FCC project FCC-CDR-V3-2018 . Within colliding nuclei with nucleon numbers , and charges , in rings with magnetic field set for protons of momentum and mass PDG-PRD-98-030001-2018 , the colliding nucleon pairs will have an average beam energy and centre-of-mass energy arXiv-1812.06772
[TABLE]
This work devotes the study of symmetric collisions. Some nuclei, from light to heavy, are considered as beam particles for high-luminosity LHC arXiv-1812.06772 . It seems reasonable for complete information to consider the same nuclei as incoming particles at energies of the HE–LHC and FCC projects. Table 1 shows the essential kinematic parameters for various nuclei, where the first line corresponds to the TeV and second line – to the TeV for each parameter considered.
The radius for beam particle is estimated as the radius of spherically-symmetric object with fm book-1 ; book-2 . For interactions the quark-quark collisions () can be also considered with the following estimations arXiv-hep-ph-0410324-2004 and for constituent quarks.
The approach of the point-like charge can be applied for the finite-size object with characteristic linear scale (radius) at sufficiently large impact parameters . The amplitude value of magnetic field from (1) can be re-written . Thus, one can see from (1) and (5) the amplitude and extremes , of the hard-sphere model show the similar behavior , , or with changes of the charge number and radius of beam particle and at fixed . The following approximate empirical relation is valid for an isobar of a selected nucleus that is stable relative to -decay book-2 : . Then, one can derive the - and -dependence of the quantity within point-like particle and hard-sphere approaches for magnetic field
[TABLE]
III Results
Numerous phenomenological studies are devoted to the (electro)magnetic fields arising from the nucleus-nucleus collisions111See, for instance, some review papers AHEP-2013-490495-2013 ; RPP-79-076302-2016 and references therein. The overview of electromagnetic probe production in heavy ion collisions at relativistic energies can be found elsewhere JPCF-832-012035-2017 .. However, up to now the papers are for the energies TeV AHEP-2014-193039-2014 and they are usually focused on the heavy ion collisions. In this work, the strength of external magnetic field is estimated within approaches of point-like charges (1) and hard sphere for collisions of the particles from Table 1 with corresponding to the nominal proton-proton collision energies within HE–LHC and FCC–hh projects for the first time.
The dependence at the center of collision obtained within the approach of point-like charges shows rapid decrease with for any beam types from Table 1, especially for . The (1) allows the estimations for amplitude of the magnetic field and characteristic time depends on the beam type and . The results for amplitude are following GeV2 for and this parameter is in the range GeV2 for rest nuclei; fm/ for and fm/ for other nuclei at TeV. The corresponding estimations are GeV2 for and GeV2 for rest of Table 1; fm/ for and fm/ for other nuclei at TeV. Values of the parameters and are mostly growth for transition from to collisions. The quantitative results above correspond to the semi-central collisions ().
Figs. 2, 3 show the dependence for (a), (b), (c) and (d) collisions in central (dashed lines), semi-central (solid curves) and peripheral (dotted lines) events at at and 100 TeV respectively. These smooth curves are obtained within hard sphere model for the range with help of the analytic equation (4). The magnetic field strength for particle species from Table 1 at HE–LHC (Fig. 2) and FCC–hh (Fig. 3) energies decreases fast with increase in a vacuum, especially for peripheral collisions. Such behavior of the dependence is in agreement with previous results at lower energies Okorokov-arXiv-0908.2522-2009 ; Okorokov-YaFE-4-805-2013 . On the left boundaries of the temporary ranges studies the absolute value of magnetic filed reaches the extremely large values which are in order of magnitude (30) GeV2 at (100) TeV depending on the type of beam and centrality. The estimations for derived within the hard sphere approach for collisions at TeV Okorokov-YaFE-4-805-2013 reasonably agree with the results from the UrQMD IJMPA-24-5925-2009 and HIJING PRD-85-044907-2012 models, whereas the amplitude value of depends more weakly on centrality, and dependence decreases faster with in last cases than that for hard sphere approach. Furthermore, there is a similar situation between the hard-sphere results and calculations from HSD model PRC-83-054911-2011 in which some smaller value of amplitude of and faster decrease of magnetic field strength with increase of is predicted with respect to the corresponding results obtained with help of (4). The reasonable agreement between various approaches proves that the hard-sphere model can be considered as appropriate approach for estimation of the time evolution of (electro)magnetic field strength in particle collisions. Therefore with taking into account much higher energies studied here it allows the qualitative expectation that the equation (4) provide the reasonable estimations for in HE-LHC and FCC-hh energy domains. The previous analysis Okorokov-YaFE-4-805-2013 shown also that at least for TeV. Moreover numerical calculations within various approaches predicted the peak in the dependence shown that the width of the peak decreases with growth . Those one can expect that the values obtained here for ultra high energies (Figs. 2, 3) are reasonable estimations for amplitude values of the strength of magnetic field in nuclear collisions. The weakest dependence both on the beam type and on is observed for peripheral collisions, in which a dominant contribution to comes from spectator nucleons. At fixed (i) the magnetic-field strength is larger for collisions of heavier nuclei; (ii) the magnetic field becomes weaker as grows within range of time accessible for the analytic equation (4). The last effect is due to a faster divergence of spectator nucleons at the increase of , whose contribution depends strongly on the rapidity of beam particles. These relations between curves shown in Figs. 2, 3 for various beam types and coincide with results of the previous works Okorokov-arXiv-0908.2522-2009 ; Okorokov-YaFE-4-805-2013 .
Here the proton radius is estimated in accordance with the general approach for all elements from the periodic table. On the other hand such method provides significant overestimation of the with respect to the ”preferable” CODATA value fm for charge radius of the proton Okorokov-IJMPA-33-1850077-2018 . As consequence the overestimation leads to the decrease of the first term in (4) and the increase of . This additional uncertainty is understandable for proton and corresponding study is in the progress. As observed at smaller collision energies a consistent transition from the simplest approximation of point-like sources to the hard sphere model and the two-component Fermi model Okorokov-JPConfSer-668-012129-2016 ; Okorokov-JPConfSer-675-022021-2016 for the nucleon-density distribution in a nucleus leads to a decrease in , especially for the first two models Okorokov-PAN-80-1133-2017 . It seems the agreement between model with point-like charges and hard sphere model is some better at ultra high energies of the HE–LHC and FCC–hh projects. Those one can expect some decrease the values for more accurate Fermi model with respect to those presented here but possibly this changing will not be dramatic. The calculations are in the progress for the magnetic field in ultra-high energy particle collisions with Fermi model for the nucleon distributions nucleus.
Also the time dependence of is studied for collisions within the approach of point-like charges. Based on the (1) the following estimations are obtained for values of the magnetic-field amplitude and characteristic time: GeV2 and fm/ for the corresponds to the -quark and (100) TeV. These estimations correspond to the relative impact parameter .
IV Discussion
As discussed in Okorokov-PAN-80-1133-2017 collisions of relativistic nuclei also generate very strong . These electromagnetic fields may have a substantial effect on multiparticle-production processes in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). The hydrodynamic properties of strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP), together with the chiral QCD anomaly and an extremely strong external magnetic field, lead to the emergence of anomalous hydrodynamic phenomena, which are manifestations of the non-Abelian quantum nature of QCD PPNP-88-1-2016 . Allied phenomena include currents flowing along the direction of the magnetic field or inner vorticity. Experimental signatures of such macroscopic manifestations of the chiral QCD anomaly are observed in nucleus–nucleus collisions as the separation of electric charges etc.
One can note that reaches the value on about MeV in central and semi-central collisions for fm/ at energy of HE–LHC (Fig. 2a) and FCC-hh (Fig. 3a) project. This value corresponds in order of magnitude to the range of low boundary for the strength of magnetic field at which experimental manifestation of chiral magnetic effect (CME) appears MeV2 NPA-803-227-2008 . One other hand the fm/ agrees reasonably with the estimations for the onset the thermalization of the glasma into a sQGP. Moreover the magnetic-field lifetime increases dramatically upon taking into account the conductivity of matter and its expansion AHEP-2013-490495-2013 . Therefore the present investigation of the magnetic field within hard sphere model indicates that the HE–LHC and FCC–hh projects can provide the novel possibility for study the chiral effects, for instance, CME in collisions. One can expects the background effects in events will be significantly weaker than that in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the same energy. Also extremely large values of at ultra high energies and high luminosities of HE–LHC and FCC–hh can provide the opportunity for study of flavor dependence of the violation with help the azimuthal correlations of various particle species. Thus experimental study of topology of QCD vacuum can be one of the focuses for studies of bulk properties at the HE–LHC, FCC. Furthermore, the GeV2 would also have a profound effect on the breaking of the chiral symmetry of the strong interactions PR-348-163-2001 . As seen in Figs. 2, 3, the strength of the magnetic field achieves such values within the hard sphere model at fm/ in (Figs. 2a, 3a) and (Figs. 2b, 3b) interactions and at significantly larger times in collisions of heavier ions (Figs. 2c, 3c), (Figs. 2d, 3d). Thus the extremely strong magnetic field can affect chirality during the non-equilibrium very early stages of space-time evolution of the final-state strongly interacting matter.
The HE–LHC, FCC–hh facilities open the novel opportunity for study of polarization phenomena in hot environment in particular the precise measurements of the difference in polarization of primary and and polarization of heavier hyperons (for instance, ). Considered extremely strong GeV2 will provides important changes for behavior of quarkonium and, perhaps, more heavier particles and states in particular . Also electromagnetic fields created in particle collisions at ultra relativistic energies supposed within HE–LHC, FCC–hh projects can be useful for the study of fundamental properties of theory namely non-linear or non-commutative features of quantum electrodynamics (QED), e.g., with help of the light-by-light scattering, production the magnetic monopoles by the electromagnetic dual of Schwinger pair creation, etc. Okorokov-arXiv-1812.07688-2018 . However, these semi-qualitative suggestions should be verified by additional quantitative and detailed analysis.
In Okorokov-AHEP-2016-5972709-2016 the possible effect of Bose–Eistein condesation in and nucleus–nucleus collisions at FCC–hh energies was considered in detailed. The closely related topic is the study of influence of the very short pulse of the extremely strong Abelian (electro)magnetic field on the particle production, in particular, pion condensation in external field PRL-120-032001-2018 . Furthermore, as shown above the amplitude value of the magnetic field expected for collisions is G for the corresponds to the -quark and (100) TeV. These values are close in order to magnitude to the estimation for strength of at which boson condensation occurs PLB-257-201-1991 . The amplitude values of for any considered interactions ( from Table 1 and collisions) are in the range of so called very intense magnetic fields ( – G) which can be generated in the early Universe PR-348-163-2001 . Such can influence the structure of the electroweak vacuum and on the properties of corresponding phase transition. Therefore, the extremely strong at HE–LHC and FCC–hh energies can influence on the electroweak processes.
V Conclusions
Summarizing the foregoing, one can draw the following conclusions.
Collisions of relativistic particles are a source of the strongest electromagnetic field known in nature. For the first time the estimations for absolute value of magnetic field are obtained within various approaches for proton and nuclear beams at ultra high energies corresponded to the HE–LHC and FCC–hh projects. The analytic approaches used for estimation of strength of the magnetic field do not take into account the possible influence of the matter created in final state, i.e. the approaches correspond to the vacuum conditions. The model with point-like charges predicts the peak value of about GeV2 at TeV and at TeV while the more realistic hard sphere approach provides and 30 GeV2. The strength of magnetic field rapidly decrease with time and increases with growth of atomic number. The amplitude for is estimated at level GeV2 in quark-quark collisions for charges correspond to -quark at nominal (100) TeV.
The extremely strong (electro)magnetic field expected at HE–LHC and FCC–hh can influence on strong and electroweak interaction processes. In particular the principle possibilities appear for study of chiral magnetic effect in proton-proton collisions, for boson condensation and for manifestation of non-commutative features of the quantum electrodynamics. Further development of theoretical and experimental methods are of crucial importance for drawing more definitive conclusions for these qualitative suggestions.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported partly by NRNU MEPhI Academic Excellence Project (contract No 02.a03.21.0005, 27.08.2013).
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