Local spin polarizations in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Lanzhou (China); Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States)
- Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States)
Here, based on a generalized side-jump formalism for massless chiral fermions, which naturally takes into account the spin-orbit coupling in the scattering of two chiral fermions and the chiral vortical effect in a rotating chiral fermion matter, we have developed a covariant and total-angular-momentum-conserved chiral transport model to study both the global and local polarizations of this matter. For a system of massless quarks of random spin orientations and finite vorticity in a box, we have demonstrated that the model can exactly conserve the total angular momentum of the system and dynamically generate the quark spin polarization expected from a thermally equilibrated quark matter. Using this model to study the spin polarization in relativistic heavy-ion collision, we have found that the local quark spin polarizations depend strongly on the reference frame where they are evaluated as a result of the nontrivial axial charge distribution caused by the chiral vortical effect. We have further shown that because of the anomalous orbital or side-jump contribution to the quark spin polarization, the local quark polarizations calculated in the medium rest frame are qualitatively consistent with the local polarizations of Lambda hyperons measured in experiments.
- Research Organization:
- Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC); Welch Foundation
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0015266; A-1358
- OSTI ID:
- 1851982
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1760964
- Journal Information:
- Nuclear Physics. A, Vol. 1005, Issue C; ISSN 0375-9474
- Publisher:
- ElsevierCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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