Production of a chiral magnetic anomaly with emerging turbulence and mean-field dynamo action

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that in relativistic plasmas, fluctuating chiral chemical potentials can induce magnetic dynamos and turbulence, leading to universal magnetic spectra, even without a mean chiral imbalance.

Contribution

It reveals the occurrence of chiral dynamo action driven by fluctuating mu_5 and characterizes the resulting turbulence and magnetic spectra, expanding understanding beyond uniform mu_5 scenarios.

Findings

Dynamo action occurs with fluctuating mu_5 having zero mean.

Magnetically-dominated turbulence is generated.

Universal k^(-1) and k^(-3) spectra develop independently of initial conditions.

Abstract

In relativistic magnetized plasmas, asymmetry in the number densities of left- and right-handed fermions, i.e., a non-zero chiral chemical potential mu_5, leads to an electric current along the magnetic field. This causes a chiral dynamo instability for a uniform mu_5, but our simulations reveal a dynamo even for fluctuating mu_5 with zero mean. It produces magnetically-dominated turbulence and generates mean magnetic fields via the magnetic alpha effect. Eventually, a universal scale-invariant k^(-1) spectrum of mu_5 and a k^(-3) magnetic spectrum are formed independently of the initial condition.