http://arxiv.org/abs/1612.00032
We analyze the chiral magnetic effect in a neutral plasma from the point of view of energy conservation, and construct an effective potential for the growth of helical perturbations of the electromagnetic field. We show that a negative curvature at the origin of the potential, indicating instability of the plasma, is induced by a chiral asymmetry in electron Fermi energy, as opposed to number density, while the potential grows at large field value. It follows that the ground state for a plasma has zero magnetic helicity; a nonzero electron mass will allow an excited state of a plasma with nonzero helicity to relax to that ground state quickly. We conclude that a chiral plasma instability triggered by weak interactions is not a viable mechanism for explaining magnetic fields in neutron stars.
D. Kaplan, S. Reddy and S. Sen
Fri, 2 Dec 16
47/70
Comments: 14 pages, 2 figures
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