TY - JOUR

T1 - Magnetohydrodynamics of chiral relativistic fluids

AU - Boyarsky, Alexey

AU - Fröhlich, Jürg

AU - Ruchayskiy, Oleg

PY - 2015/8/11

Y1 - 2015/8/11

N2 - We study the dynamics of a plasma of charged relativistic fermions at very high temperature T蠑m, where m is the fermion mass, coupled to the electromagnetic field. In particular, we derive a magnetohydrodynamical description of the evolution of such a plasma. We show that, compared to conventional magnetohydronamics (MHD) for a plasma of nonrelativistic particles, the hydrodynamical description of the relativistic plasma involves new degrees of freedom described by a pseudoscalar field originating in a local asymmetry in the densities of left-handed and right-handed fermions. This field can be interpreted as an effective axion field. Taking into account the chiral anomaly we present dynamical equations for the evolution of this field, as well as of other fields appearing in the MHD description of the plasma. Due to its nonlinear coupling to helical magnetic fields, the axion field significantly affects the dynamics of a magnetized plasma and can give rise to a novel type of inverse cascade.

AB - We study the dynamics of a plasma of charged relativistic fermions at very high temperature T蠑m, where m is the fermion mass, coupled to the electromagnetic field. In particular, we derive a magnetohydrodynamical description of the evolution of such a plasma. We show that, compared to conventional magnetohydronamics (MHD) for a plasma of nonrelativistic particles, the hydrodynamical description of the relativistic plasma involves new degrees of freedom described by a pseudoscalar field originating in a local asymmetry in the densities of left-handed and right-handed fermions. This field can be interpreted as an effective axion field. Taking into account the chiral anomaly we present dynamical equations for the evolution of this field, as well as of other fields appearing in the MHD description of the plasma. Due to its nonlinear coupling to helical magnetic fields, the axion field significantly affects the dynamics of a magnetized plasma and can give rise to a novel type of inverse cascade.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84940568398&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevD.92.043004

DO - 10.1103/PhysRevD.92.043004

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:84940568398

VL - 92

JO - Physical Review D

JF - Physical Review D

SN - 2470-0010

IS - 4

M1 - 043004

ER -