"Parity Violation and Anomaly-induced Transport in Super-dense Matter"
| Date/Time: | Monday, 22 Apr 2013 from 4:10 pm to 5:00 pm |
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| Location: | Physics 0005 |
| Phone: | 515-294-5441 |
| Channel: | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences |
| Actions: | Download iCal/vCal | Email Reminder |
Abstract
I will discuss the fate of parity invariance (mirror symmetry) in hot and dense quark-gluon matter. While parity is globally conserved in Quantum ChromoDynamics, the interplay of quantum anomalies, topology and external magnetic field can induce local parity-odd effects. The anomalies also lead to a variety of novel effects in relativistic hydrodynamics. In particular, the local imbalance between left- and right-handed fermions in the presence of magnetic field induces the non-dissipative transport of electric chargespatial sepa("the Chiral Magnetic Effect").
In heavy ion collisions, this effect can be detected through the separation of positive and negative hadrons with respect to the reaction plane. There is a recent evidence for charge separation from the experiments at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the Large Hadron Collider. The effect has intriguing implications for the cosmology of the Early Universe, and has analogs in condensed matter physics (quantum wires, graphene, and Weyl semimetals).
Bio
I am a professor of physics at Stony Brook University and a scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York.
My research interests include quantum field theory, nuclear physics, condensed matter physics and quantum optics. I believe that we live in the era of a "big synthesis" when the artificial boundaries between the sub-fields of physics and natural sciences in general begin to disappear revealing the deep connections between the phenomena that occur on vastly different scales - from femto-meter to parsec.
Dmitri Kharzeev was educated at Moscow State University; he received his PhD in particle and nuclear physics there in 1990. He then spent two postdoctoral years in the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics, three years in the Theory Division at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and a year at Bielefeld University in Germany. In 1997 he joined the newly created RIKEN-BNL Research Center at Brookhaven National Laboratory under direction of Prof. T.D. Lee, a Nobel laureate. In 2000 he became a Scientist with tenure at BNL; he had been the head of the Nuclear Theory group there from 2004 till 2010. Under his leadership the BNL group has become the highest ranked nuclear theory group in the US National laboratories system. Since 2007, he has also been an adjunct professor at Yale University. In 2010, Kharzeev has become a Professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook University; he also continues to hold the Senior scientist appointment at BNL.