Seebeck and Nernst coefficients of a magnetized hot QCD medium with number conserving kernel

TL;DR

This paper investigates thermoelectric coefficients of a hot, magnetized QCD medium using a particle-number conserving collision model, revealing magnetic field and chirality effects on Seebeck and Nernst responses.

Contribution

It introduces a particle-number conserving BGK collision kernel into the study of thermoelectric effects in magnetized QCD matter, incorporating medium effects via a quasiparticle model.

Findings

Seebeck coefficient slightly reduced by BGK compared to RTA without magnetic field.

Strong magnetic field enhances Seebeck and Nernst coefficients for all quark flavors.

Chirality dependence observed: Seebeck larger for left-handed modes, Nernst higher for right-handed modes.

Abstract

We have studied the thermoelectric response of a hot and magnetized QCD medium created in the noncentral events at heavy-ion collider experiments. The collisional aspects of the medium have been embedded in the relativistic Boltzmann transport equation (RBTE) using Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) collision integral, which insures the particle number conservation, unlike the commonly used relaxation time approximation (RTA). We have incorporated the thermal medium effects in the guise of a quasiparticle model, where the interaction among the partons is embodied in the medium dependent mass of the quark, which has been evaluated using the framework of the perturbative thermal QCD with a magnetic field in the background. In the absence of $B$, the Seebeck coefficient for individual quark flavors gets slightly reduced in the BGK term in comparison to naive RTA, while it gets enhanced for the composite partonic medium. In the presence of strong magnetic field ($B$), the BGK term enhances the Seebeck coefficient for the individual flavors as well as that for medium. The medium Seebeck coefficient rises with the strength of quark chemical potential ($\mu$) in the absence as well as that in the strong $B$. We observe chirality dependence in the Seebeck and Nernst coefficients in the weak magnetic field as the degeneracy in the masses of left- and right-handed chiral modes gets lifted in the weak $B$. Seebeck coefficient is larger for left-handed modes contrary to the Nernst coefficient which is higher for the right-handed modes. Seebeck coefficient is almost similar in the weak field for both the collision term, while Nernst coefficient gets reduced (enhanced) for $L$ ($R$) modes considerably in the BGK collision term.