Chiral Instabilities and the Onset of Chiral Turbulence in QED Plasmas

Mark Mace (Department of Physics, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35, 40014 Jyväskylä, Finland; Helsinki Institute of Physics, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 64, 00014 Helsinki, Finland) ; Niklas Mueller (Physics Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Building 510A, Upton, New York 11973, USA) ; Sören Schlichting (Fakultät für Physik, Universität Bielefeld, D-33615 Bielefeld, Germany) ; Sayantan Sharma (The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, HBNI, Chennai 600113, India)

We present a first principles study of chiral plasma instabilities and the onset of chiral turbulence in QED plasmas with strong gauge matter interaction (e2Nf=64), far from equilibrium. By performing classical-statistical lattice simulations of the microscopic theory, we show that the generation of strong helical magnetic fields from a helicity imbalance in the fermion sector proceeds via three distinct phases. During the initial linear instability regime the helicity imbalance of the fermion sector causes an exponential growth (damping) of magnetic field modes with right- (left-) handed polarization, for which we extract the characteristic growth (damping) rates. Secondary growth of unstable modes accelerates the helicity transfer from fermions to gauge fields and ultimately leads to the emergence of a self-similar scaling regime characteristic of a decaying turbulence, where magnetic helicity is efficiently transferred to macroscopic length scales. Within this turbulent regime, the evolution of magnetic helicity spectrum can be described by an infrared power spectrum with spectral exponent κ=10.2±0.5 and dynamical scaling exponents α=1.14±0.50 and β=0.37±0.13.

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      "source": "APS", 
      "value": "We present a first principles study of chiral plasma instabilities and the onset of chiral turbulence in QED plasmas with strong gauge matter interaction (<math><msup><mi>e</mi><mn>2</mn></msup><msub><mi>N</mi><mi>f</mi></msub><mo>=</mo><mn>64</mn></math>), far from equilibrium. By performing classical-statistical lattice simulations of the microscopic theory, we show that the generation of strong helical magnetic fields from a helicity imbalance in the fermion sector proceeds via three distinct phases. During the initial linear instability regime the helicity imbalance of the fermion sector causes an exponential growth (damping) of magnetic field modes with right- (left-) handed polarization, for which we extract the characteristic growth (damping) rates. Secondary growth of unstable modes accelerates the helicity transfer from fermions to gauge fields and ultimately leads to the emergence of a self-similar scaling regime characteristic of a decaying turbulence, where magnetic helicity is efficiently transferred to macroscopic length scales. Within this turbulent regime, the evolution of magnetic helicity spectrum can be described by an infrared power spectrum with spectral exponent <math><mi>\u03ba</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>10.2</mn><mo>\u00b1</mo><mn>0.5</mn></math> and dynamical scaling exponents <math><mi>\u03b1</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>1.14</mn><mo>\u00b1</mo><mn>0.50</mn></math> and <math><mi>\u03b2</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>0.37</mn><mo>\u00b1</mo><mn>0.13</mn></math>."
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Published on:
15 May 2020
Publisher:
APS
Published in:
Physical Review Letters , Volume 124 (2020)
Issue 19
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.191604
arXiv:
1910.01654
Copyrights:
Published by the American Physical Society
Licence:
CC-BY-4.0

Fulltext files: