Chiral Magnetic Effect in Heavy Ion Collisions: The Present and Future

TL;DR

This paper reviews the chiral magnetic effect in heavy ion collisions, discussing its theoretical basis, experimental measurements, current status, and future research directions in understanding this quantum phenomenon.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of CME in heavy ion collisions, highlighting recent experimental and theoretical progress and outlining open problems and future prospects.

Findings

Experimental evidence for CME in heavy ion collisions

Advances in measurement techniques and theoretical models

Identification of open challenges and future research directions

Abstract

The chiral magnetic effect (CME) is a collective quantum phenomenon that arises from the interplay between gauge field topology and fermion chiral anomaly, encompassing a wide range of physical systems from semimetals to quark-gluon plasma. This review, with a focus on CME and related effects in heavy ion collisions, aims to provide an introductory discussion on its conceptual foundation and measurement methodology, a timely update on the present status in terms of experimental findings and theoretical progress, as well as an outlook into the open problems and future developments.