Spacetime dynamics of chiral magnetic currents in a hot non-Abelian plasma

TL;DR

This paper uses holography to study the spacetime evolution of chiral magnetic currents in a hot non-Abelian plasma, revealing large-scale topological fluctuations as a key driver of correlations relevant for heavy-ion collision experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a holographic approach to analyze the dynamical creation of axial charge and its impact on electric current correlations in non-Abelian plasmas.

Findings

Spatial extent of current correlation is large (~1 fm) and grows over time.

Correlations are driven by topological fluctuations, such as sphaleron-like dynamics.

Provides numerical estimates for correlation size for phenomenological use.

Abstract

The correlations of electric currents in hot non-Abelian plasma are responsible for the experimental manifestations of the chiral magnetic effect (CME) in heavy-ion collisions. We evaluate these correlations using holography, and show that they are driven by large-scale topological fluctuations. In a non-Abelian plasma with chiral fermions, local axial charge can be generated either by topological fluctuations (creating domains with nonzero Chern-Simons number) or by thermal fluctuations. Within holography, we investigate the dynamical creation of the axial charge and isolate the imprint of the topological dynamics on the spatial correlations of electric current. In particular, we show that the spatial extent of the current correlation is quite large ($\sim 1\ {\rm fm}$) and grows with time, which is consistent with sphaleronlike dynamics. We provide numerical estimates for this spatial size that can be used as an input in phenomenological analyses.