Implications of the isobar run results for chiral magnetic effect in heavy ion collisions

Understand

Chiral magnetic effect (CME) is a macroscopic transport phenomenon induced by quantum anomaly in the presence of chiral imbalance and an external magnetic field.

• Relativistic heavy ion collisions provide the unique opportunity to look for CME in a non-Abelian plasma, where the chiral imbalance is created by topological transitions similar to those occurring in the Early Universe.
• The isobar run at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider was proposed as a way to separate the possible CME signal driven by magnetic field from the background.
• The first blind analysis results from this important experiment have been recently released by the STAR Collaboration.