Dynamic Magnetic Response of Quark-Gluon Plasma to Electromagnetic Fields

TL;DR

This paper models the electromagnetic response of viscous quark-gluon plasma using relativistic kinetic theory, deriving analytic expressions for magnetic fields during high-energy nuclear collisions, highlighting weak energy dependence at large energies.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive formalism incorporating dissipative effects at all orders in linear response within the relativistic Boltzmann framework for quark-gluon plasma.

Findings

Magnetic fields are governed by the plasma response along the light-cone at high energies.

Derived an analytic expression for magnetic fields along the beam axis.

Magnetic field strength varies weakly with collision energy for s_{NN}  30 GeV.

Abstract

We investigate the electromagnetic response of a viscous quark-gluon plasma in the framework of the relativistic Boltzmann equation with current conserving collision term. Our formalism incorporates dissipative effects at all orders in linear response to the electromagnetic field while accounting for the full space- and time-dependence of the perturbing fields. As an example, we consider the collision of two nuclei in a stationary, homogeneous quark-gluon plasma. We show that for large collision energies the induced magnetic fields are governed by the response of quark-gluon plasma along the light-cone. In this limit we derive an analytic expression for the magnetic field along the beam axis between the receding nuclei and show that its strength varies only weakly with collision energy for $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}} \ge 30\,$GeV.