Electromagnetic fields in ultra-peripheral relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Ultra-peripheral heavy-ion collisions(UPCs)offer unique opportunities to study processes under strong electromagnetic fields.In these collisions,highly charged fast-moving ions carry strong electromagnetic fields that can be effectively treated as photon fluxes.The exchange of photons can induce photonuclear and two-photon interactions and excite ions.This excitation of the ions results in Coulomb dissociation with the emission of photons,neutrons,and other particles.Additionally,the electromagnetic fields generated by the ions can be sufficiently strong to enforce mutual interactions between the two colliding ions.Consequently,the two colliding ions experience an electromagnetic force that pushes them in opposite directions,causing a back-to-back correlation in the emitted neutrons.Using a Monte Carlo simulation,we qualitatively demonstrate that the above electromagnetic effect is large enough to be observed in UPCs,which would provide a clear means to study strong electromagnetic fields and their effects.

Novel quantum phenomena induced by strong magnetic fields in heavy-ion collisions

The relativistic heavy-ion collisions create both hot quark–gluon matter and strong magnetic fields, and provide an arena to study the interplay between quantum chromodynamics and quantum electrodynamics. In recent years, it has been shown that such an interplay can generate a number of interesting quantum phenomena in hadronic and quark–gluon matter. In this short review, we first discuss some properties of the magnetic fields in heavy-ion collisions and then give an overview of the magnetic fieldinduced novel quantum effects. In particular, we focus on the magnetic effect on the heavy flavor mesons, the heavyquark transports, and the phenomena closely related to chiral anomaly.

Anomalous chiral transports and spin polarization in heavy-ion collisions

Relativistic heavy-ion collisions create hot quark–gluon plasma as well as very strong electromagnetic(EM)and fluid vortical fields.The strong EM field and vorticity can induce intriguing macroscopic quantum phenomena such as chiral magnetic,chiral separation,chiral electric separation,and chiral vortical effects as well as the spin polarization of hadrons.These phenomena provide us with experimentally feasible means to study the nontrivial topological sector of quantum chromodynamics,the possible parity violation of strong interaction at high temperature,and the subatomic spintronics of quark–gluon plasma.These studies,both in theory and in experiments,are strongly connected with other subfields of physics such as condensed matter physics,astrophysics,and cold atomic physics,and thus form an emerging interdisciplinary research area.We give an introduction to the aforementioned phenomena induced by the EM field and vorticity and an overview of the current status of experimental research in heavy-ion collisions.We also briefly discuss spin hydrodynamics as well as chiral and spin kinetic theories.

Spin polarization formula for Dirac fermions at local equilibrium

We derive a Cooper-Frye type spin polarization formula for Dirac fermions at local thermal equilibrium described by a grand canonical ensemble specified by temperature, fluid velocity, chemical potential, and spin potential. We discuss the physical meaning of different contributions to spin polarization and compare them with previous work. The present formula provides machinery to convert the spin potential computed in, e.g., relativistic spin hydrodynamics to the spin polarization observable in,e.g., heavy-ion collisions.