HIC for FAIR logo Nuclear Physics Colloquium

Location: FIAS, Science Campus Riedberg, Ruth-Moufang-Str. 1, lecture room 100
Time: Thursday, December 20, 2012, 13:00-14:00 (plus 10min for discussion)
Contact: hees@fias.uni-frankfurt.de


New approach to the local strong parity violation in the quark-gluon plasma

Tigran Kalaydzhyan (DESY Hamburg)

I would like to present our recent progress in understanding the local strong P- and CP-violation in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). The physics of the violation is due to the presence of non-trivial gluonic fields, which induce a local imbalance between densities of left- and right-handed quarks. Under specific circumstances (such as e.g. extremely strong electromagnetic fields) this imbalance can lead to macroscopic electric currents potentially observable in ongoing heavy-ion experiments. I will focus on a novel "chiral superfluid" approach to the problem, where we derive a new effective theory of QCD at the range of temperatures relevant for the heavy-ion collisions. The main idea of the model is the presence of a new light axion-like dynamical degree of freedom within QCD. This new axion-like field, being a bosonized version of near-zero fermionic modes, accommodates the essential chiral properties of the QGP and, together with thermalized quarks and gluons, forms a two-component fluid. The dynamics of the fluid turns out to be governed by a system of equations similar to one of a superfluid. I will also comment on possible experimental tests of the model.

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