Magnetars and the Chiral Plasma Instabilities [HEAP]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.4760


We propose a possible new mechanism for a strong and stable magnetic field of compact stars due to an instability in the presence of a chirality imbalance of electrons—the chiral plasma instability. A large chirality imbalance of electrons inevitably occurs associated with the parity-violating weak process during core collapse of supernovae. We estimate the maximal magnetic field due to this instability to be of order 10^{18} G at the core. This mechanism naturally generates a large magnetic helicity from the chiral asymmetry, which ensures the stability of the large magnetic field.

Read this paper on arXiv…

A. Ohnishi and N. Yamamoto
Thu, 20 Feb 14
39/52