Magnetohydrodynamics, charged currents and directed flow in heavy ion collisions

Understand

The hot QCD matter produced in any heavy ion collision with a nonzero impact parameter is produced within a strong magnetic field.

• We study the imprint that these fields leave on the azimuthal distributions and correlations of the produced charged hadrons.
• The magnetic field is time-dependent and the medium is expanding, which leads to the induction of charged currents due to the combination of Faraday and Hall effects.
• We find that these currents result in a charge- dependent directed flow v1 that is odd in rapidity and odd under charge exchange.