Hydrodynamics with triangle anomalies

Chiral Anomaly and Dynamos from Inhomogeneous Chemical Potential Fluctuations

In the standard model of particle physics, the chiral anomaly can occur in relativistic plasmas and plays a role in the early Universe, protoneutron stars, heavy-ion collisions, and quantum materials. It gives rise to a magnetic instability if the number densities of left- and right-handed electrically charged fermions are unequal. Using direct numerical simulations, we show this can result just from spatial fluctuations of the chemical potential, causing a chiral dynamo instability, magnetically driven turbulence, and ultimately a large-scale magnetic field through the magnetic α effect.

Chiral Instabilities and the Fate of Chirality Imbalance in Non-Abelian Plasmas

We present a microscopic study of chiral plasma instabilities and axial charge transfer in non-Abelian plasmas with a strong gauge-matter coupling g^{2}N_{f}=64, by performing 3+1D real-time classical-statistical lattice simulation with dynamical fermions. We explicitly demonstrate for the first time that-unlike in an Abelian plasma-the transfer of chirality from the matter sector to the gauge fields occurs predominantly due to topological sphaleron transitions. We elaborate on the similiarities and differences of the axial charge dynamics in cold Abelian U(1) and non-Abelian SU(2) plasmas, and comment on the implications of our findings for the study of anomalous transport phenomena, such as the chiral magnetic effect in QCD matter.

Hydrodynamic Manifestations of Gravitational Chiral Anomaly

The conservation of an axial current modified by the gravitational chiral anomaly implies the universal transport phenomenon (kinematical vortical effect) dependent solely on medium vorticity and acceleration, but not dependent explicitly on its temperature and density. This general analysis is verified for the case of massless fermions with spin-1/2.

Fracton Hydrodynamics without Time-Reversal Symmetry

We present an effective field theory for the nonlinear fluctuating hydrodynamics of a single conserved charge with or without time-reversal symmetry, based on the Martin-Siggia-Rose formalism. Applying this formalism to fluids with only charge and multipole conservation, and with broken time-reversal symmetry, we predict infinitely many new dynamical universality classes, including some with arbitrarily large upper critical dimensions. Using large scale simulations of classical Markov chains, we find numerical evidence for a breakdown of hydrodynamics in quadrupole-conserving models with broken time-reversal symmetry in one spatial dimension. Our framework can be applied to the hydrodynamics around stationary states of open systems, broadening the applicability of previously developed ideas and methods to a wide range of systems in driven and active matter.

New Developments in Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamics

Relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (RMHD) provides an extremely useful description of the low-energy long-wavelength phenomena in a variety of physical systems from quark–gluon plasma in heavy-ion collisions to matters in supernova, compact stars, and early universe. We review the recent theoretical progresses of RMHD, such as a formulation of RMHD from the perspective of magnetic flux conservation using the entropy–current analysis, the nonequilibrium statistical operator approach applied to quantum electrodynamics, and the relativistic kinetic theory. We discuss how the transport coefficients in RMHD are computed in kinetic theory and perturbative quantum field theories. We also explore the collective modes and instabilities in RMHD with a special emphasis on the role of chirality in a parity-odd plasma. We also give some future prospects of RMHD, including the interaction with spin hydrodynamics and the new kinetic framework with magnetic flux conservation.

Thermodynamics for a Rotating Chiral Fermion System in the Uniform Magnetic Field

We study the thermodynamics for a uniformly rotating system of chiral fermions under the uniform magnetic field. Then, we obtain the mathematical expressions of some thermodynamic quantities in terms of the series with respect to the external magnetic field B, the angular velocity Ω and the chemical potential μ, expanded around B=0, Ω=0 and μ=0. Our results given by such series are a generalization of the expressions available in the references simply corresponding to the lower-order terms of our findings. The zero-temperature limit of our results is also discussed.

Constraining Non-Dissipative Transport Coefficients in Global Equilibrium

The fluid in global equilibrium must fulfill some constraints. These constraints can be derived from quantum statistical theory or kinetic theory. In this work, we show how these constraints can be applied to determine the non-dissipative transport coefficients for chiral systems along with the energy-momentum conservation, chiral anomaly for charge current and trace anomaly in the energy-momentum tensor.

Damping of Pseudo-Goldstone Fields

Approximate symmetries abound in nature. If these symmetries are also spontaneously broken, the would-be Goldstone modes acquire a small mass, or inverse correlation length, and are referred to as pseudo-Goldstones. At nonzero temperature, the effects of dissipation can be captured by hydrodynamics at sufficiently long scales compared to the local equilibrium. Here, we show that, in the limit of weak explicit breaking, locality of hydrodynamics implies that the damping of pseudo-Goldstones is completely determined by their mass and diffusive transport coefficients. We present many applications: superfluids, QCD in the chiral limit, Wigner crystal and density wave phases in the presence of an external magnetic field or not, nematic phases, and (anti)ferromagnets. For electronic density wave phases, pseudo-Goldstone damping generates a contribution to the resistivity independent of the strength of disorder, which can have a linear temperature dependence provided the associated diffusivity saturates a bound. This is reminiscent of the phenomenology of strange metal high-T_{c} superconductors, where charge density waves are observed across the phase diagram.

Skin effect as a probe of transport regimes in Weyl semimetals

Weyl semimetals are a class of three-dimensional materials, whose low-energy excitations mimic massless fermions. In consequence they exhibit various unusual transport properties related to the presence of chiral anomalies, a subtle quantum phenomenon that denotes the breaking of the classical chiral symmetry by quantum fluctuations. In this work we present a universal description of transport in weakly disordered Weyl semimetals with several scattering mechanisms taken into account. Our work predicts the existence of a new anomaly-induced transport regime in these materials and gives a crisp experimental signature of a chiral anomaly in optical conductivity measurements. Finally, by also capturing the hydrodynamic regime of quasiparticles, our construction bridges the gap between developments in electronic fluid mechanics and three-dimensional semimetals.

We study the propagation of an oscillatory electromagnetic field inside a Weyl semimetal. In conventional conductors, the motion of the charge carriers in the skin layer near the surface can be diffusive, ballistic, or hydrodynamic. We show that the presence of chiral anomalies, intrinsic to the massless Weyl particles, leads to a hitherto neglected nonlocal regime that can separate the normal and viscous skin effects. We propose to use this regime as a diagnostic of the presence of chiral anomalies in optical conductivity measurements. These results are obtained from a generalized kinetic theory that includes various relaxation mechanisms, allowing us to investigate different transport regimes of Weyl semimetals.

Axial-Current Anomaly in Euler Fluids

We argue that a close analog of the axial-current anomaly of quantum field theories with fermions occurs in the classical Euler fluid. The conservation of the axial current (closely related to the helicity of inviscid barotropic flow) is anomalously broken by the external electromagnetic field as ∂_{μ}j_{A}^{μ}=2E·B, similar to that of the axial current of a quantum field theory with Dirac fermions, such as QED.

Global Polarization Theory Overview

We give a brief overview about theory development of spin polarization in relativistic heavy ion collisions, which includes how the polarization could be generated by single scattering, what the polarization could be in equilibrium, how to address some recent puzzles in spin polarization in heavy ion collisions and how much progress we have made in spin hydrodynamics and spin kinetic theory. We will also discuss the possible helicity polarization in relativistic heavy ion collisions.

Non-Abelian anomalous constitutive relations of a chiral hadronic fluid

We study the constitutive relations of a chiral hadronic fluid in presence of non-Abelian’t Hooft anomalies. Analytical expressions for the covariant currents are obtained at first order in derivatives in the chiral symmetric phase, for both two and three quark flavors in the presence of chiral imbalance. We also investigate the constitutive relations after chiral symmetry breaking at the leading order.

Quantum Anomalies (in) Matter

Over the last decade it has bee realized that triangle anomalies give rise to dissipationless transport phenomena in hot and dense relativistic matter. I will review anomalous transport theory and then discuss its applications to the quark gluon plasma and the electronics of Weyl semimetals. Finally I briefly discuss the absence of genuine chiral torsional transport.

Vortical Effects for Free Fermions on Anti-De Sitter Space-Time

Here, we study a quantum fermion field in rigid rotation at finite temperature on anti-de Sitter space. We assume that the rotation rate Ω is smaller than the inverse radius of curvature ℓ−1, so that there is no speed of light surface and the static (maximally-symmetric) and rotating vacua coincide. This assumption enables us to follow a geometric approach employing a closed-form expression for the vacuum two-point function, which can then be used to compute thermal expectation values (t.e.v.s). In the high temperature regime, we find a perfect analogy with known results on Minkowski space-time, uncovering curvature effects in the form of extra terms involving the Ricci scalar R. The axial vortical effect is validated and the axial flux through two-dimensional slices is found to escape to infinity for massless fermions, while for massive fermions, it is completely converted into the pseudoscalar density −iψ¯γ5ψ. Finally, we discuss volumetric properties such as the total scalar condensate and the total energy within the space-time and show that they diverge as [1−ℓ2Ω2]−1 in the limit Ω→ℓ−1.

TT[over ¯]-Deformed Conformal Field Theories out of Equilibrium

We consider the out-of-equilibrium transport in TT[over ¯]-deformed (1+1)-dimension conformal field theories (CFTs). The theories admit two disparate approaches, integrability and holography, which we make full use of in order to compute the transport quantities, such as the exact nonequilibrium steady state currents. We find perfect agreements between the results obtained from these two methods, which serve as nontrivial checks of the TT[over ¯]-deformed holographic correspondence from the dynamical standpoint. It turns out that integrability also allows us to compute the momentum diffusion, which is given by a universal formula. We also remark on an intriguing connection between the TT[over ¯]-deformed CFTs and reversible cellular automata.

Signatures of Chiral Magnetic Effect in the Collisions of Isobars

Quantum anomaly is a fundamental feature of chiral fermions. In chiral materials, the microscopic anomaly leads to nontrivial macroscopic transport processes such as the chiral magnetic effect (CME), which has been in the spotlight lately across disciplines of physics. The quark-gluon plasma (QGP) created in relativistic nuclear collisions provides the unique example of a chiral material consisting of intrinsically relativistic chiral fermions. Potential discovery of CME in QGP is of utmost significance, with extensive experimental searches carried out over the past decade. A decisive new collider experiment, dedicated to detecting CME in the collisions of isobars, was performed in 2018 with analysis now underway. In this Letter, we develop the state-of-the-art theoretical tool for describing CME phenomena in these collisions and propose an appropriate isobar subtraction strategy for best background removal. Based on that, we make quantitative predictions for signatures of CME in the collisions of isobars. A new and robust observable that is independent of axial charge uncertainty-the ratio between isobar-subtracted γ- and δ- correlators-is found to be -(0.41±0.27) for event-plane measurement and -(0.90±0.45) for reaction-plane measurement.

Breakdown of Diffusion on Chiral Edges

We show that dirty quantum Hall systems exhibit large hydrodynamic fluctuations at their edge that lead to anomalously damped charge excitations in the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang universality class ω≃ck-iDk^{3/2}. The dissipative optical conductivity of the edge is singular at low frequencies σ(ω)∼1/ω^{1/3}. These results are direct consequences of the charge continuity relation, the chiral anomaly, and thermalization on the edge-in particular translation invariance is not assumed. Diffusion of heat similarly breaks down, with a universality class that depends on whether the bulk thermal Hall conductivity vanishes. We further establish the theory of fluctuating hydrodynamics for surface chiral metals, where charge fluctuations give logarithmic corrections to transport.

Spin Hydrodynamic Generation in the Charged Subatomic Swirl

Recently there have been significant interests in the spin hydrodynamic generation phenomenon from multiple disciplines of physics. Such phenomenon arises from global polarization effect of microscopic spin by macroscopic fluid rotation and is expected to occur in the hot quark-gluon fluid (the "subatomic swirl") created in relativistic nuclear collisions. This was indeed discovered in experiments which however revealed an intriguing puzzle: a polarization difference between particles and anti-particles. We suggest a novel application of a general connection between rotation and magnetic field: a magnetic field naturally arises along the fluid vorticity in the charged subatomic swirl. We establish this mechanism as a new way for generating long-lived in-medium magnetic field in heavy ion collisions. Due to its novel feature, this new magnetic field provides a nontrivial explanation to the puzzling observation of a difference in spin hydrodynamic generation for particles and anti-particles in heavy ion collisions.

Dynamical Topological Transitions in the Massive Schwinger Model with a θ Term

Aiming at a better understanding of anomalous and topological effects in gauge theories out of equilibrium, we study the real-time dynamics of a prototype model for CP violation, the massive Schwinger model with a θ term. We identify dynamical quantum phase transitions between different topological sectors that appear after sufficiently strong quenches of the θ parameter. Moreover, we establish a general dynamical topological order parameter, which can be accessed through fermion two-point correlators and, importantly, which can be applied for interacting theories. Enabled by this result, we show that the topological transitions persist beyond the weak-coupling regime. Finally, these effects can be observed with tabletop experiments based on existing cold-atom, superconducting-qubit, and trapped-ion technology. Our Letter thus presents a significant step towards quantum simulating topological and anomalous real-time phenomena relevant to nuclear and high-energy physics.

Weyl Anomaly Induced Current in Boundary Quantum Field Theories

We show that when an external magnetic field parallel to the boundary is applied, the Weyl anomaly gives rises to a new anomalous current in the vicinity of the boundary. The induced current is a magnetization current in origin: the movement of the virtual charges near the boundary give rise to a nonuniform magnetization of the vacuum and hence a magnetization current. Unlike other previously studied anomalous current phenomena such as the chiral magnetic effect or the chiral vortical effect, this induced current does not rely on the presence of a material system and can occur in vacuum. Similar to the Casimir effect, our discovered phenomenon arises from the effect of the boundary on the quantum fluctuations of the vacuum. However this induced current is purely quantum mechanical and has no classical limit. We briefly comment on how this induced current may be observed experimentally.

Two-Particle Collisional Coordinate Shifts and Hydrodynamic Anomalous Hall Effect in Systems without Lorentz Invariance

We show that electrons undergoing a two-particle collision in a crystal experience a coordinate shift that depends on their single-particle Bloch wave functions and derive a gauge-invariant expression for such a shift, valid for arbitrary band structures and arbitrary two-particle interaction potentials. As an application of the theory, we consider two-particle coordinate shifts for Weyl fermions in space of three spatial dimensions. We demonstrate that such shifts in general contribute to the anomalous Hall conductivity of a clean electron liquid.

Dynamics of Vortices in Chiral Media: The Chiral Propulsion Effect

We study the motion of vortex filaments in chiral media and find a semiclassical analog of the anomaly-induced chiral magnetic effect. The helical solitonic excitations on vortices in a parity-breaking medium are found to carry additional energy flow along the vortex in the direction dictated by the sign of chirality imbalance; we call this new transport phenomenon the chiral propulsion effect. The dynamics of vortex filaments in the parity-breaking background is described by a modified version of the localized induction equation. We analyze the linear stability of simple vortex solutions and study the effects of chiral media on the excitation spectrum and the growth rate of the unstable modes. We also show that, if the equation of motion of the filament is symmetric under the simultaneous reversal of parity and time, planar-shape solutions cannot transport energy.

Collective excitations in Weyl semimetals in the hydrodynamic regime

The spectrum of collective excitations in Weyl materials is studied by using consistent hydrodynamics. The corresponding framework includes the vortical and chiral anomaly effects, as well as the dependence on the separations between the Weyl nodes in energy b ₀ and momentum [Formula: see text]. The latter are introduced via the Chern-Simons contributions to the electric current and charge densities in Maxwell's equations. It is found that, even in the absence of a background magnetic field, certain collective excitations (e.g. the helicon-like modes and the anomalous Hall waves) are strongly affected by the chiral shift [Formula: see text]. In a background magnetic field, the existence of the distinctive longitudinal and transverse anomalous Hall waves with a linear dispersion relation is predicted. They originate from the oscillations of the electric charge density and electromagnetic fields, in which different components of the fields are connected via the anomalous Hall effect in Weyl semimetals.

Vorticity and Λ polarization in baryon rich matter

The polarization of Λ hyperons due to axial chiral vortical effect is discussed. The effect is proportional to (strange) chemical potential and is pronounced at lower energies in baryon-rich matter. The polarization of ¯ has the same sihn and larger magnitude. The emergence of vortical structures is observed in kinetic QGSM models. The hydrodynamical helicity separation receives the contribution of longitudinal velocity and vorticity implying the quadrupole structure of the latter. The transition from the quark vortical effects to baryons in confined phase may be achieved by exploring the axial charge. At the hadronic level the polarization corresponds to the cores of quantized vortices in pionic superfluid. The chiral vortical effects may be also studied in the frmework of Wigner function establishing the relation to the thermodynamical approach to polarization.

Non-abelian anomalies and transport

We study the role of quantum anomalies in relativistic fluids of nonabelian theories within the hydrodynamic expansion. To this end, we compute the local functional that solves the anomaly equations, and obtain the Bardeen-Zumino terms that covariantize the currents. We particularize these results to a background with an electromagnetic field and chiral imbalance for two flavors.

Rotation and spin dynamics in heavy-ion collisions

Statistical average of the axial current is evaluated on the basis of the covariantWigner function. In the zero-mass limit, the axial current is described by a smooth function only at temperatures higher than the Unruh temperature. At zero temperature, the axial current, as a function of the angular velocity and chemical potential, vanishes in a two-dimensional plane region.

The Chiral Separation Effect in quenched finite-density QCD

We present results of a study of the Chiral Separation Effect (CSE) in quenched finite-density QCD. Using a recently developed numerical method we calculate the conserved axial current for exactly chiral overlap fermions at finite density for the first time. We compute the anomalous transport coeffcient for the CSE in the confining and deconfining phase and investigate possible deviations from the universal value. In both phases we find that non-perturbative corrections to the CSE are absent and we reproduce the universal value for the transport coeffcient within small statistical errors. Our results suggest that the CSE can be used to determine the renormalisation factor of the axial current.

Chiral fluids: a few theoretical issues

We review briefly a few topic concerning physics of fluids whose constituents are massless fermions interacting in chiral invariant way. Macroscopic manifestations of the chral anomaly is one of central issues. Another topic is ultraviolet vs infrared sensistivity of chiral magnetic and vortical effects. To clarify dynamical issues involved we rely mostly on a (well-known) toy model of pionic superfluidity.

Phenomenology of anomalous chiral transports in heavy-ion collisions

High-energy Heavy-ion collisions can generate extremely hot quark-gluon matter and also extremely strong magnetic fields and fluid vorticity. Once coupled to chiral anomaly, the magnetic fields and fluid vorticity can induce a variety of novel transport phenomena, including the chiral magnetic effect, chiral vortical effect, etc. Some of them require the environmental violation of parity and thus provide a means to test the possible parity violation in hot strongly interacting matter. We will discuss the underlying mechanism and implications of these anomalous chiral transports in heavy-ion collisions.

Strongly interacting matter under rotation

The vorticity-driven effects are systematically studied in various aspects. With AMPT the distributions of vorticity has been investigated in heavy ion collisions with different collision parameters. Taking the rotational polarization effect into account a generic condensate suppression mechanism is discussed and quantitatively studied with NJL model. And in chiral restored phase the chiral vortical effects would generate a new collective mode, i.e. the chiral vortical wave. Using the rotating quark-gluon plasma in heavy ion collisions as a concrete example, we show the formation of induced flavor quadrupole in QGP and estimate the elliptic flow splitting effect for Λ baryons.

Static Magnetic Response of Non-Fermi-Liquid Density

We consider the response of the density of a fermion ensemble to an applied weak static magnetic field. It is known that, for a noninteracting Fermi gas, this response is fully characterized by the Fermi volume and the Berry curvature on the Fermi surface. Here we show the same result holds for interacting fermions, including a Fermi liquid and a non-Fermi liquid, to all orders in perturbation theory. Our result relies only on the assumption of a well-defined Fermi surface and the general analytic properties of quantum field theory, and is completely model independent.

Numerical Study of Nonperturbative Corrections to the Chiral Separation Effect in Quenched Finite-Density QCD

We demonstrate the nonrenormalization of the chiral separation effect (CSE) in quenched finite-density QCD in both confinement and deconfinement phases using a recently developed numerical method which allows us, for the first time, to address the transport properties of exactly chiral, dense lattice fermions. This finding suggests that CSE can be used to fix renormalization constants for axial current density. Explaining the suppression of the CSE which we observe for topologically nontrivial gauge field configurations on small lattices, we also argue that CSE vanishes for self-dual non-Abelian fields inside instanton cores.

Chiral Shock Waves

We study the shock waves in relativistic chiral matter. We argue that the conventional Rankine-Hugoinot relations are modified due to the presence of chiral transport phenomena. We show that the entropy discontinuity in a weak shock wave is quadratic in the pressure discontinuity when the effect of chiral transport becomes sufficiently large. We also show that rarefaction shock waves, which do not exist in usual nonchiral fluids, can appear in chiral matter. The direction of shock wave propagation is found to be completely determined by the direction of the vorticity and the chirality of fermions. These features are exemplified by shock propagation in dense neutrino matter in the hydrodynamic regime.

Pairing Phase Transitions of Matter under Rotation

The phases and properties of matter under global rotation have attracted much interest recently. In this Letter we investigate the pairing phenomena in a system of fermions under the presence of rotation. We find that there is a generic suppression effect on pairing states with zero angular momentum. We demonstrate this effect with the chiral condensation and the color superconductivity in hot dense QCD matter as explicit examples. In the case of chiral condensation, a new phase diagram in the temperature-rotation parameter space is found, with a nontrivial critical point.