Electromagnetic field and the chiral magnetic effect in the quark-gluon plasma

Abstract

Time evolution of electromagnetic field created in heavy-ion collisions strongly depends on the electromagnetic response of the quark-gluon plasma, which can be described by the Ohmic and chiral conductivities. The later is intimately related to the Chiral Magnetic Effect. I argue that a solution to the classical Maxwell equations at finite chiral conductivity is unstable due to the soft modes $k<σ_χ$ that grow exponentially with time. In the kinematical region relevant for the relativistic heavy-ion collisions, I derive analytical expressions for the magnetic field of a point charge. I show that finite chiral conductivity causes oscillations of magnetic field at early times.

13 pages, 3 figures; v2: improved presentation, typos fixed, v3: a mistake in Eq. (62) is fixed