DOE PAGES title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Chiral magnetic effect reveals the topology of gauge fields in heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

The topological structure of vacuum is the cornerstone of non-Abelian gauge theories describing strong and electroweak interactions within the standard model of particle physics. However, transitions between different topological sectors of the vacuum (believed to be at the origin of the baryon asymmetry of the Universe) have never been observed directly. An experimental observation of such transitions in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) has become possible in heavy-ion collisions, where the chiral magnetic effect converts the chiral asymmetry (generated by topological transitions in hot QCD matter) into an electric current, under the presence of the magnetic field produced by the colliding ions. The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider programme on heavy-ion collisions such as the zirconium–zirconium and ruthenium–ruthenium isobars thus has the potential to uncover the topological structure of vacuum in a laboratory experiment. This discovery would have far-reaching implications for the understanding of QCD, the origin of the baryon asymmetry in the present-day Universe, and other areas, including condensed matter physics.

Authors:
 [1]; ORCiD logo [2]
  1. Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States); Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States). RIKEN Research Center
  2. Indiana Univ., Bloomington, IN (United States). Center for Exploration of Energy and Matter (CEEM)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Nuclear Physics (NP); National Science Foundation (NSF)
OSTI Identifier:
1763343
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 2280822
Report Number(s):
BNL-220805-2021-JAAM
Journal ID: ISSN 2522-5820; TRN: US2205953
Grant/Contract Number:  
SC0012704; FG-88ER40388; PHY-1913729; FG02-88ER40388
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Nature Reviews Physics
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 3; Journal Issue: 1; Journal ID: ISSN 2522-5820
Publisher:
Springer Nature
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS

Citation Formats

Kharzeev, Dmitri E., and Liao, Jinfeng. Chiral magnetic effect reveals the topology of gauge fields in heavy-ion collisions. United States: N. p., 2020. Web. doi:10.1038/s42254-020-00254-6.
Kharzeev, Dmitri E., & Liao, Jinfeng. Chiral magnetic effect reveals the topology of gauge fields in heavy-ion collisions. United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-020-00254-6
Kharzeev, Dmitri E., and Liao, Jinfeng. Wed . "Chiral magnetic effect reveals the topology of gauge fields in heavy-ion collisions". United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-020-00254-6. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1763343.
@article{osti_1763343,
title = {Chiral magnetic effect reveals the topology of gauge fields in heavy-ion collisions},
author = {Kharzeev, Dmitri E. and Liao, Jinfeng},
abstractNote = {The topological structure of vacuum is the cornerstone of non-Abelian gauge theories describing strong and electroweak interactions within the standard model of particle physics. However, transitions between different topological sectors of the vacuum (believed to be at the origin of the baryon asymmetry of the Universe) have never been observed directly. An experimental observation of such transitions in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) has become possible in heavy-ion collisions, where the chiral magnetic effect converts the chiral asymmetry (generated by topological transitions in hot QCD matter) into an electric current, under the presence of the magnetic field produced by the colliding ions. The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider programme on heavy-ion collisions such as the zirconium–zirconium and ruthenium–ruthenium isobars thus has the potential to uncover the topological structure of vacuum in a laboratory experiment. This discovery would have far-reaching implications for the understanding of QCD, the origin of the baryon asymmetry in the present-day Universe, and other areas, including condensed matter physics.},
doi = {10.1038/s42254-020-00254-6},
journal = {Nature Reviews Physics},
number = 1,
volume = 3,
place = {United States},
year = {Wed Nov 25 00:00:00 EST 2020},
month = {Wed Nov 25 00:00:00 EST 2020}
}

Works referenced in this record:

Isolating the chiral magnetic effect from backgrounds by pair invariant mass
journal, February 2019


Fluid dynamics of R-charged black holes
journal, January 2009


Testing the Chiral Magnetic and Chiral Vortical Effects in Heavy Ion Collisions
journal, February 2011


Measurement of charge multiplicity asymmetry correlations in high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions at s N N = 200 GeV
journal, April 2014


Observation of the Chiral-Anomaly-Induced Negative Magnetoresistance in 3D Weyl Semimetal TaAs
journal, August 2015


Berry Fermi liquid theory
journal, February 2017


Quantum oscillations in the chiral magnetic conductivity
journal, June 2017


Weyl Metals
journal, March 2018


Vacuum Periodicity in a Yang-Mills Quantum Theory
journal, July 1976


Experimental signatures of the mixed axial–gravitational anomaly in the Weyl semimetal NbP
journal, July 2017

  • Gooth, Johannes; Niemann, Anna C.; Meng, Tobias
  • Nature, Vol. 547, Issue 7663
  • DOI: 10.1038/nature23005

Consistent Chiral Kinetic Theory in Weyl Materials: Chiral Magnetic Plasmons
journal, March 2017


Anomalous chiral transport in heavy ion collisions from Anomalous-Viscous Fluid Dynamics
journal, July 2018


Chiral magnetic photocurrent in Dirac and Weyl materials
journal, February 2019


Global Λ hyperon polarization in nuclear collisions
journal, August 2017


Equation of state in ( 2 + 1 )-flavor QCD
journal, November 2014


Probing the Chiral Anomaly with Nonlocal Transport in Three-Dimensional Topological Semimetals
journal, September 2014


Looking for parity violation in heavy-ion collisions
journal, December 2009


Isobar Collisions at RHIC to Test Local Parity Violation in Strong Interactions
journal, January 2019


A PCAC puzzle: π0→γγ in the σ-model
journal, March 1969


Hydrodynamics with Triangle Anomalies
journal, November 2009


Anatomy of the chiral magnetic effect in and out of equilibrium
journal, March 2017


Magnetic field induced polarization difference between hyperons and anti-hyperons
journal, November 2019


Full result for the QCD equation of state with <mml:math altimg="si1.gif" overflow="scroll" xmlns:xocs="http://www.elsevier.com/xml/xocs/dtd" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://www.elsevier.com/xml/ja/dtd" xmlns:ja="http://www.elsevier.com/xml/ja/dtd" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:tb="http://www.elsevier.com/xml/common/table/dtd" xmlns:sb="http://www.elsevier.com/xml/common/struct-bib/dtd" xmlns:ce="http://www.elsevier.com/xml/common/dtd" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:cals="http://www.elsevier.com/xml/common/cals/dtd" xmlns:sa="http://www.elsevier.com/xml/common/struct-aff/dtd"><mml:mn>2</mml:mn><mml:mo>+</mml:mo><mml:mn>1</mml:mn></mml:math> flavors
journal, March 2014


Chiral magnetic effect
journal, October 2008


Chiral anomaly, Berry phase, and chiral kinetic theory from worldlines in quantum field theory
journal, March 2018


Impact of magnetic-field fluctuations on measurements of the chiral magnetic effect in collisions of isobaric nuclei
journal, March 2019


The topological properties of magnetic helicity
journal, October 1984


Charge-dependent flow and the search for the chiral magnetic wave in Pb-Pb collisions at s N N = 2.76 TeV
journal, April 2016


Comments about the electromagnetic field in heavy-ion collisions
journal, September 2014


The structure of the gauge theory vacuum
journal, August 1976


Importance of Isobar Density Distributions on the Chiral Magnetic Effect Search
journal, July 2018


Complete and consistent chiral transport from Wigner function formalism
journal, August 2018


Chiral magnetic effect and an experimental bound on the late time magnetic field strength
journal, October 2018


Beam-Energy Dependence of Charge Separation along the Magnetic Field in Au + Au Collisions at RHIC
journal, July 2014


Violation of CP in variance, C asymmetry, and baryon asymmetry of the universe
journal, May 1991


Parity violation in hot QCD: Why it can happen, and how to look for it
journal, February 2006


Predictions for isobaric collisions at s N N = 200 GeV from a multiphase transport model
journal, April 2018


Nonlinear responses of chiral fluids from kinetic theory
journal, January 2018


Experimental searches for the chiral magnetic effect in heavy-ion collisions
journal, July 2019


Axial-Vector Vertex in Spinor Electrodynamics
journal, January 1969


Chiral Magnetic Effect and Anomalous Transport from Real-Time Lattice Simulations
journal, September 2016


Azimuthally fluctuating magnetic field and its impacts on observables in heavy-ion collisions
journal, January 2013


Parity violation in hot QCD: How to detect it
journal, November 2004


Low- p T e + e Pair Production in Au + Au Collisions at s N N = 200 GeV and U + U Collisions at s N N = 193 GeV at STAR
journal, September 2018


Gravitational Anomaly and Transport Phenomena
journal, July 2011


Aspects of conformal symmetry and chirality
journal, September 1970


Hydrodynamics from charged black branes
journal, January 2011

  • Banerjee, Nabamita; Bhattacharya, Jyotirmoy; Bhattacharyya, Sayantani
  • Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2011, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1007/JHEP01(2011)094

Signatures of Chiral Magnetic Effect in the Collisions of Isobars
journal, December 2020


High energy breakdown of perturbation theory in the electroweak instanton sector
journal, January 1990


Mapping the phases of quantum chromodynamics with beam energy scan
journal, April 2020


New correlator to detect and characterize the chiral magnetic effect
journal, June 2018


Observation of charge-dependent azimuthal correlations and possible local strong parity violation in heavy-ion collisions
journal, May 2010


Cancellation of equilibrium parity-violating currents
journal, December 1980


Chiral Magnetic Effects in Nuclear Collisions
journal, October 2020


The degree of knottedness of tangled vortex lines
journal, January 1969


Chiral magnetic and vortical effects in high-energy nuclear collisions—A status report
journal, May 2016


Chiral kinetic approach to the chiral magnetic effect in isobaric collisions
journal, July 2018


Probe chiral magnetic effect with signed balance function
journal, April 2020


Status of the chiral magnetic effect and collisions of isobars
journal, June 2017


Instantons in QCD
journal, April 1998


Chiral Magnetic Wave at Finite Baryon Density and the Electric Quadrupole Moment of the Quark-Gluon Plasma
journal, July 2011


Ultraviolet Behavior of Non-Abelian Gauge Theories
journal, June 1973


Charge separation relative to the reaction plane in Pb-Pb collisions at s N N = 2.76 TeV
journal, January 2013


Reliable Perturbative Results for Strong Interactions?
journal, June 1973


Trace and dilatation anomalies in gauge theories
journal, July 1977

  • Collins, John C.; Duncan, Anthony; Joglekar, Satish D.
  • Physical Review D, Vol. 16, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.16.438

Testing the Chiral Magnetic Effect with Central U + U Collisions
journal, October 2010


Baryon number violating scatterings in laboratories
journal, November 2017


Probing the Effects of Strong Electromagnetic Fields with Charge-Dependent Directed Flow in Pb-Pb Collisions at the LHC
journal, July 2020


Numerical magneto-hydrodynamics for relativistic nuclear collisions
journal, November 2016


A saddle-point solution in the Weinberg-Salam theory
journal, November 1984


Evidence for the chiral anomaly in the Dirac semimetal Na3Bi
journal, September 2015


Normal ground state of dense relativistic matter in a magnetic field
journal, April 2011


Weyl and Dirac semimetals in three-dimensional solids
journal, January 2018


Characteristic Forms and Geometric Invariants
journal, January 1974

  • Chern, Shiing-Shen; Simons, James
  • The Annals of Mathematics, Vol. 99, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.2307/1971013

Varying the chiral magnetic effect relative to flow in a single nucleus-nucleus collision
journal, July 2018


Charge-dependent pair correlations relative to a third particle in p + Au and d + Au collisions at RHIC
journal, November 2019


The effects of topological charge change in heavy ion collisions: “Event by event and violation”
journal, May 2008


Influence of the neutron-skin effect on nuclear isobar collisions at energies available at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
journal, June 2020


Chiral magnetic response to arbitrary axial imbalance
journal, April 2020


Chiral magnetic wave
journal, April 2011


Azimuthal Charged-Particle Correlations and Possible Local Strong Parity Violation
journal, December 2009


Event-shape-engineering study of charge separation in heavy-ion collisions
journal, January 2018


Pseudoparticle solutions of the Yang-Mills equations
journal, October 1975


Computation of the quantum effects due to a four-dimensional pseudoparticle
journal, December 1976


Quantized Chiral Magnetic Current from Reconnections of Magnetic Flux
journal, October 2016


Spin hydrodynamic generation
journal, November 2015

  • Takahashi, R.; Matsuo, M.; Ono, M.
  • Nature Physics, Vol. 12, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1038/nphys3526

Chiral magnetic effect in ZrTe5
journal, February 2016

  • Li, Qiang; Kharzeev, Dmitri E.; Zhang, Cheng
  • Nature Physics, Vol. 12, Issue 6
  • DOI: 10.1038/nphys3648

Charge separation induced by -odd bubbles in QCD matter
journal, December 2007


Observation of Charge-Dependent Azimuthal Correlations in p Pb Collisions and Its Implication for the Search for the Chiral Magnetic Effect
journal, March 2017


Observation of Charge Asymmetry Dependence of Pion Elliptic Flow and the Possible Chiral Magnetic Wave in Heavy-Ion Collisions
journal, June 2015


Quantifying the chiral magnetic effect from anomalous-viscous fluid dynamics
journal, January 2018