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28 August 2016 to 4 September 2016
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Chiral Magnetic Effect in Condensed Matters

30 Aug 2016, 15:30
30m
Alexandros II (Makedonia Palace)

Alexandros II

Makedonia Palace

Section A Focus Subsection: Emergent gauge fields and chiral fermions Section A: Focus Subsection

Speaker

Dmitri Kharzeev (Stony Brook University)

Description

The chiral magnetic effect (CME) is the generation of electrical current induced by chirality imbalance in the presence of magnetic field. It is a macroscopic manifestation of the quantum chiral anomaly in systems possessing charged chiral fermions. In quark-gluon plasma containing nearly massless quarks, the chirality imbalance is sourced by the topological transitions. In condensed matter systems, the chiral quasiparticles emerge in the so-called Dirac and Weyl semimetals having a linear dispersion relation. Recently, CME was discovered first in a 3D Dirac semimetal ZrTe$_5$ [Li, Kharzeev, et al arXiv:1412.6543, Nature Physics (2016) doi:10.1038/nphys3648)]. It is now observed in more than half a dozen Dirac and Weyl semimetals. 3D Dirac/Wyl semimetals have opened a fascinating possibility to study the quantum dynamics of relativistic field theory in condensed matter experiments, with potential for important practical applications.

Primary author

Dmitri Kharzeev (Stony Brook University)

Co-author

Qiang Li (Brookhaven National Laboratory)

Presentation materials