Chiral magnetic effect
Chiral magnetic effect (CME) is the generation of electric current along an external magnetic field induced by chirality imbalance. The CME is a macroscopic quantum phenomenon present in systems with charged chiral fermions, such as the quark-gluon plasma, or Dirac and Weyl semimetals; for review, see.[1] The CME is a consequence of chiral anomaly in quantum field theory; unlike conventional superconductivity or superfluidity, it does not require a spontaneous symmetry breaking. The chiral magnetic current is non-dissipative, because it is topologically protected: the imbalance between the densities of left- and right-handed chiral fermions is linked to the topology of fields in gauge theory by the Atiyah-Singer index theorem.
The experimental observation of CME in a Dirac semimetal ZrTe5 was reported in 2014 by a group from Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University.[2][3] The STAR detector at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, Brookhaven National Laboratory [4] and ALICE: A Large Ion Collider Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, CERN[5] presented an experimental evidence for the existence of CME in the quark-gluon plasma [6]
References
- ^ D. Kharzeev (2014). "The Chiral Magnetic Effect and anomaly-induced transport". Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics. 75: 133–151. arXiv:1312.3348. doi:10.1016/j.ppnp.2014.01.002.
- ^ Q. Li, D. E. Kharzeev, C. Zhang, Y. Huang, I. Pletikosić, A. V. Fedorov, R. D. Zhong, J. A. Schneeloch, G. D. Gu & T. Valla (2016). "Chiral magnetic effect in ZrTe5". Nature Physics. 12 (6): 550–554. arXiv:1412.6543. doi:10.1038/nphys3648.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Brookhaven National Laboratory (8 February 2016). "Chiral magnetic effect generates quantum current". Phys.org. Retrieved 4 Jan 2019.
- ^ L. Adamczyk et al. (STAR Collaboration) (2015). "Observation of charge asymmetry dependence of pion elliptic flow and the possible chiral magnetic wave in heavy-ion collisions". Physical Review Letters. 114 (25): 252302. arXiv:1504.02175. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.252302.
- ^ R. Belmont et al. (ALICE Collaboration) (2014). "Charge-dependent anisotropic flow studies and the search for the Chiral Magnetic Wave in ALICE". Nuclear Physics A. 931: 981. arXiv:1408.1043. doi:10.1016/j.nuclphysa.2014.09.070.
- ^ Brookhaven National Laboratory (8 June 2015). "Scientists see ripples of a particle-separating wave in primordial plasma". Phys.org. Retrieved 4 Jan 2019.