Weekly seminars
Chiral magnetic effect and cosmic magnetic fields
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Europe/Paris
Auditorium (Annecy-le-Vieux)
Auditorium
Annecy-le-Vieux
Description
It is generally believed that primordial plasma l at high
temperatures is homogeneous and isotropic. This assumption
underlies the description of many important processes in the early
Universe. I will demonstrate that at non-zero values of baryon and
lepton number a translationally invariant and homogeneous state of
primordial plasma becomes unstable and the system transits towards a
ground state, containing a large-scale magnetic fields. The origin
of this effect is the chiral anomaly (violations of classical
symmetries by quantum effects). I will argue that due to the same
phenomenon a new degree of freedom should be added to the
magnetohydrodynamic equations, governing the evolution of magnetic
fields in relativistic plasma. The resulting "chiral" MHD greatly
improves the survival forecast of cosmic magnetic fields generated
at or prior to electroweak epoch.