Non-central heavy-ion collisions are the place to look for DCC

We give two reasons why we believe that non-central ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions are the place to look for the disoriented chiral condensates (DCC). First, we argue that the most probable quench scenario for the formation of DCC requires non-central collisions. Second, we show by numerical simulations that strong electromagnetic fields of heavy ions can exert a surprisingly large effect on the DCC domain formation through the chiral anomaly. The effect again requires non-central collisions. Interestingly, the result of simulations is consistent with the formation of correlated two domains of the chiral condensate, which are aligned in space, perpendicular to the scattering plane, but misaligned in isospin space.

Duke Scholars

Author Berndt Mueller Physics