Chiral charge dynamics in Abelian gauge theories at finite temperature

Understand

We study fermion number non-conservation (or chirality breaking) in Abelian gauge theories at finite temperature.

• We consider the presence of a chemical potential $\mu$ for the fermionic charge, and monitor its evolution with real-time classical lattice simulations.
• This method accounts for short-scale fluctuations not included in the usual effective magneto-hydrodynamics (MHD) treatment.
• We observe a self-similar decay of the chemical potential, accompanied by an inverse cascade process in the gauge field that leads to a production of long-range helical magnetic fields.