Axial current generation from electric field: chiral electric separation effect

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.

Consistent Chiral Kinetic Theory in Weyl Materials: Chiral Magnetic Plasmons

We argue that the correct definition of the electric current in the chiral kinetic theory for Weyl materials should include the Chern-Simons contribution that makes the theory consistent with the local conservation of the electric charge in electromagnetic and strain-induced pseudoelectromagnetic fields. By making use of such a kinetic theory, we study the plasma frequencies of collective modes in Weyl materials in constant magnetic and pseudomagnetic fields, taking into account the effects of dynamical electromagnetism. We show that the collective modes are chiral plasmons. While the plasma frequency of the longitudinal collective mode coincides with the Langmuir one, this mode is unusual because it is characterized not only by oscillations of the electric current density, but also by oscillations of the chiral current density. The latter are triggered by a dynamical version of the chiral electric separation effect. We also find that the plasma frequencies of the transverse modes split up in a magnetic field. This finding suggests an efficient means of extracting the chiral shift parameter from the measurement of the plasma frequencies in Weyl materials.

Electromagnetic fields and anomalous transports in heavy-ion collisions-a pedagogical review

The hot and dense matter generated in heavy-ion collisions may contain domains which are not invariant under P and CP transformations. Moreover, heavy-ion collisions can generate extremely strong magnetic fields as well as electric fields. The interplay between the electromagnetic field and triangle anomaly leads to a number of macroscopic quantum phenomena in these P- and CP-odd domains known as anomalous transports. The purpose of this article is to give a pedagogical review of various properties of the electromagnetic fields, the anomalous transport phenomena, and their experimental signatures in heavy-ion collisions.

Simulating Chiral Magnetic and Separation Effects with Spin-Orbit Coupled Atomic Gases

The chiral magnetic and chiral separation effects-quantum-anomaly-induced electric current and chiral current along an external magnetic field in parity-odd quark-gluon plasma-have received intense studies in the community of heavy-ion collision physics. We show that analogous effects occur in rotating trapped Fermi gases with Weyl-Zeeman spin-orbit coupling where the rotation plays the role of an external magnetic field. These effects can induce a mass quadrupole in the atomic cloud along the rotation axis which may be tested in future experiments. Our results suggest that the spin-orbit coupled atomic gases are potential simulators of the chiral magnetic and separation effects.