Possibility of spontaneous parity violation in hot QCD

D. Kharzeev; M. H. G. Tytgat; R. D. Pisarski

REVIEW

Possibility of spontaneous parity violation in hot QCD

D. Kharzeev, R. D. Pisarski, M. H. G. Tytgat

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology · Submitted 2 Apr 1998 · 29 references

Pith's verdict: A clean conditional prediction — the sigma-model minima are solid, but the paper never shows how the field gets into them.

T0 · AI review

How this review was made: An AI referee (selfhosted/deepseek-v4.1-flash) read the paper on October 29, 2026 and answered a fixed list of questions about it. T0 is the starting level every paper gets. The levels describe how deeply Pith has checked the paper, never the authors.

T0 AI review An AI read the paper and answered a fixed list of questions.
T1 Audit Automatic checks that the references and files the paper relies on exist and match.
T2 Compute The paper's code or calculations re-run with the same results.
T3 Formal statement The claims written out in a formal math language a computer can read.
T4 Proof Those claims proved, and the proof checked by computer.

How Pith checks papers →

· 3 major objections · 7 minor · Ask about this paper · The compiled record · Read the full review →

Challenge this review Comment (0) Read on arXiv ↗

Cite ▾

arXiv IDhep-ph/9804221 (version 2)

Pith IDX6EPQYWI, Pith's permanent record of this paper and its review

CitationD. Kharzeev, M. H. G. Tytgat, R. D. Pisarski. "Possibility of spontaneous parity violation in hot QCD." arXiv:hep-ph/9804221 (1998). https://pith.science/paper/X6EPQYWI

Cite this reviewBibTeX for Pith's review of this paper

Claim paper

Why Pith says this

Highlight any text to comment on it.

Editor's note

read the letter

Worth your time, with one real gap. The new content is not the vanishing of the topological susceptibility above T_d — Affleck and Davis–Matheson had that — but the estimate of how it vanishes as T → T_d^- if deconfinement is second order, and, more importantly, the observation that the Di Vecchia–Veneziano potential at small a develops local minima at φ ≠ 0 that break parity. That second piece is a genuine result and it is checkable: Eq. (3) is written out, the critical ratio a_cr/μ_1^2 ≈ 0.2403 with φ_1 ≈ 4.47 is stated, and the mass spectrum at a = 0 and at a_cr is tabulated. The signatures are concrete — η → π^0π^0, the pion-pair asymmetry P in Eq. (4) — and falsifiable. They also correctly note that Vafa–Witten constrains the vacuum, not metastable states, which is the right thing to say and not everyone would have said it. The lineage from this paper to the local-parity-violation literature in heavy-ion collisions is direct, and that is the reason to read it now rather than as a historical curiosity. The soft spots are mostly acknowledged. The second-order deconfinement conjecture is flagged in the text itself (they call the first-order conclusion 'premature'), so I would not score that against them twice. The one thing I would push on is the step from 'a metastable minimum exists' to 'these states would be produced.' The only dynamical sentence in the paper — 'as the hot phase cools, the value of a changes dynamically, and the metastable state rolls smoothly into the true vacuum' — describes the evolution of a state already on the parity-violating branch. It does not say how the field gets there. At every T the φ = 0 minimum is the global one, so a system cooled from the deconfined phase sits in the true vacuum; nothing in the paper estimates the volume fraction or the fluctuation probability of domains that land on the other branch. Given the window is narrow — a/μ_1^2 ~ (T_d − T)^{3/2}, and they themselves say the ratio must be about 1% of its zero-temperature value — that is the load-bearing omission. Secondary: they argue the chiral transition is first order but use continuous mean-field scaling for a(T), f_π(T), μ_i(T); the narrowness argument (~1/N) is plausible but not quantified. Minor: the one-loop η′ coupling estimate and Eq. (1) do not quite agree, which they say plainly. Send it out. The referee should ask for a population estimate, not for the algebra.

Referee report

Significance

If the large-N picture is a useful guide, this is a genuinely interesting observation: it connects an order parameter (the topological susceptibility) to observable parity-violating signatures, and it makes falsifiable statements — η → π0π0 and the asymmetry P of Eq. (4) either appear or they do not. The paper engages the Vafa–Witten theorem directly and correctly notes that it constrains the vacuum but not metastable states. The result is conditional, and the authors say so in the text rather than hiding the condition. The main strengths are the explicit potential, the explicit numerical location of the metastable branch, and the concrete experimental handles. The weaknesses are that the phenomenological extension is asserted more strongly than it is derived, and that the temperature window in which the effect could occur is not quantified.

Major objections (3)

[Discussion of the thin-wall decay rate and the sentence 'as the hot phase cools, the value of a changes dynamically, and] Near the end of the sigma-model section the manuscript states that 'as the hot phase cools, the value of a changes dynamically, and the metastable state rolls smoothly into the true vacuum.' This sentence describes the decay of an already-populated metastable state, not how the field enters it. At every temperature the state φ = 0 remains the global minimum of Eq. (3); the parity-violating branch is local, and the field must be thermally excited or otherwise displaced across the barrier to reach it. Since the abstract's claim of 'dramatic signatures' depends on a nonzero volume fraction of such domains, the paper should either give a heuristic estimate of that fraction (for example from the barrier height Fc/T at the relevant temperature) or state explicitly that production is assumed rather than derived. As written, the step from 'the minimum exists' to 'the states are produced' is not supported.
[The paragraph introducing Eq. (4)] Immediately before Eq. (4) the manuscript writes 'It can be shown that the interactions of charged pions differ if there are regions with φ1 and φ2 ≠ 0,' but no derivation is given and no reference is supplied. The asymmetry P sums over all π+π− pairs in an event; if the plasma contains domains with both signs of φ, the contributions to P from opposite domains would cancel unless there is a correlation with the beam axis of the kind the jet-handedness analogy suggests. The paper should either sketch the derivation or cite one, and should state what is assumed about domain size and sign correlation for P not to average to zero.
[The paragraph beginning 'Putting in the zero temperature values'] The condition for the metastable branch, a/μ1² < 0.2403, is quoted in terms of the zero-temperature masses, and the paper then says that 'near Td the ratio of a/μ1² must be about 1% of its value at zero temperature.' With a(T) ~ (Td−T) and μ1²(T) ~ (Td−T)^{−1/2}, the ratio scales as (Td−T)^{3/2}, so the 1% figure corresponds to a narrow temperature band below Td. The width of that band determines whether the phenomenon is reachable in a heavy-ion collision and should be stated explicitly. Relatedly, the paper argues that the chiral transition is fluctuation-driven first order but then uses continuous mean-field scaling for a(T), fπ(T), and μi(T); the text acknowledges this ('we let quantities ... vary ... only as in mean field theory'), but the effect of a discontinuous jump in a(T) on the window and on the barrier is not estimated.

Minor objections (7)

[Abstract] The phrase 'deconfining=chiral' appears to be a typographical error and should be corrected.
[Paragraph on experimental signatures] The sentence 'Kinematically, η → π+π− is not allowed, but η → π0π0 is' is incorrect: 2mπ± ≈ 279 MeV is well below mη ≈ 548 MeV, so both channels are kinematically open. The distinction is CP/G-parity, not kinematics, and the sentence should be corrected accordingly.
[Reference [18]] The claim that the first-order conclusion for N ≥ 4 'may be premature' is supported by [18], which is listed as 'work in progress.' Since this bears on the central conditional of the paper, the status of that work should be clarified or the claim softened.
[Numerical mass fit] The fit gives mη ≈ 501 MeV against the experimental 548 MeV, a discrepancy of about 9%. Calling this 'reasonably close' is fair for a leading-order large-N treatment, but the size of the discrepancy should be stated so the reader can judge the model's accuracy.
[Abstract] The abstract does not carry the caveat, stated in the body, that a/μ1² must be about 1% of its zero-temperature value near Td, i.e. that it is unclear whether QCD realizes the condition. Adding one clause to that effect would make the abstract match the body's candor.
[Summary paragraph] The word 'deconﬁne d' in the summary appears to be a typesetting artifact and should read 'deconfined.'
[Eq. (1) and the following discussion] The paper notes that the (Td−T)^{2−α} scaling of Eq. (1) does not quite agree with the Veneziano-based estimate and chooses to trust (1). This is reasonable, but the sentence could state explicitly that the discrepancy is confined to the exponent and does not affect the vanishing of λYM and mη′ at Td.

How Pith checks papers → · Full audit of this paper →

The paper

The paper claims

At large N, if the deconfining transition is second order, the axial U(1) anomaly vanishes at the transition and metastable parity-violating states appear just below it, producing eta -> pi0 pi0 decays and parity-odd pion-pair asymmetries.

The reading

Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the theory of quarks and gluons. At low temperature quarks are confined inside hadrons; at high temperature they deconfine into a quark-gluon plasma. The authors work in the limit where the number of colors N is large, a standard theoretical simplification in which meson interactions are suppressed by 1/N. In that limit they argue that the axial U(1) symmetry, which is broken at zero temperature by quantum topological fluctuations (instantons), is effectively restored at the deconfining/chiral transition. The measure of that breaking is the topological susceptibility, which they assume drops to zero at the transition temperature T_d. If the deconfining transition is second order, the susceptibility vanishes continuously as T approaches T_d from below, and so does the eta-prime mass. The authors encode this in a nonlinear sigma model whose potential contains a term proportional to a, the anomaly strength. When a becomes small enough relative to the light quark masses, the potential develops local minima at nonzero field values. These minima are metastable: they are not the true vacuum, but they are long-lived. Because parity maps the field to its negative, a nonzero field value spontaneously breaks parity. The authors compute numerically that for three flavors the metastable state appears only when a falls to about 1 percent of its zero-temperature value, very close to T_d. They then list experimental consequences: eta and eta-prime mesons become light and can decay through parity-forbidden channels such as eta -> pi0 pi0, and charged pions from such regions would show a global parity-odd asymmetry built from the triple product of the two pion momenta and the beam axis.

Extended reading notes

Core claim

For large-N QCD, if the deconfining transition is second order, the topological susceptibility vanishes as T approaches T_d from below, and the resulting nonlinear sigma model develops metastable minima with nonzero field values that spontaneously break parity. These states would produce enhanced eta and eta-prime production, parity-violating decays such as eta -> pi0 pi0, and a global parity-odd asymmetry in charged pion pairs of the form P = sum over pi+pi- of [(P_pi+ x P_pi-) . z] / (|P_pi+||P_pi-|).

Load-bearing premise

The deconfining phase transition is assumed to be of second order at large N. The paper states this explicitly: 'Following the conjecture of [19], we henceforth assume that the deconfinement phase transition is of second order at large N.' If the transition is first order, the topological susceptibility stays constant below T_d and drops discontinuously, so no metastable parity-violating states appear. The authors themselves call the first-order conclusion 'premature' but do not establish the second-order alternative; the entire chain from vanishing susceptibility to metastable minima depends on this conjecture.

Original abstract

We suggest that for QCD in the limit of a large number of colors, N, the axial U(1) symmetry of massless quarks is effectively restored at the deconfining=chiral phase transition. If the deconfining transition is of second order, then the chiral transition is weakly first order. In this case, metastable states in which parity is spontaneously broken appear at temperatures below the phase transition. The production of these metastable states would have dramatic signatures, including enhanced production of eta and eta' mesons, which can decay through parity violating decay processes such as eta -> pi^0 pi^0, and global parity odd asymmetries for charged pions. Using a nonlinear sigma model, in QCD these metastable states only appear rather near the phase transition.

The compiled record

The paper's own sentences, arranged, kept beside the review and separate from it. Each label is drawn from a closed vocabulary; the number beside it is the probability the classifier gave that label. Numbers in the tables are the authors', checked by code. No sentence in this record was written by a model.

Compiled by classifier-1.13-20260917 via OpenRouter, question bank abstract-p1-20260923, 2026-09-23: 1 request, 4,307 input tokens, $0.0002 reported.

What the abstract itself states, as probabilities: claims first 0.03 · states limitation 0.78 · human participants 0.01 · controlled comparison 0.03 · randomized assignment 0.01 · states quantitative result 0.05 · compares with prior results 0.11 · mentions code or data availability 0.01.

The abstract, sentence by sentence

arXiv listing abstract v2. Results and the main claim are underlined; show every role.

We suggest that for QCD in the limit of a large number of colors, N, the axial U(1) symmetry of massless quarks is effectively restored at the deconfining=chiral phase transition. If the deconfining transition is of second order, then the chiral transition is weakly first order. In this case, metastable states in which parity is spontaneously broken appear at temperatures below the phase transition. The production of these metastable states would have dramatic signatures, including enhanced production of eta and eta' mesons, which can decay through parity violating decay processes such as eta -> pi^0 pi^0, and global parity odd asymmetries for charged pions. Using a nonlinear sigma model, in QCD these metastable states only appear rather near the phase transition.

background contribution method result interpretation main claim

What the classifier reports for each sentence. The number is the probability it gave the label.
#	sentence	role	the authors' own work	states the main conclusion	strength
s0	We suggest that for QCD in the limit of a large number of colors, N, the axial U(1) symmetry of massless quarks is effectively restored at the deconfining=chiral phase transition.	contribution 0.74	0.45	0.34	hedged possibility 0.78
s1	If the deconfining transition is of second order, then the chiral transition is weakly first order.	result 0.74	0.42	0.11	asserted 0.69
s2	In this case, metastable states in which parity is spontaneously broken appear at temperatures below the phase transition.	result 0.81	0.44	0.28	asserted 0.84
s3	The production of these metastable states would have dramatic signatures, including enhanced production of eta and eta' mesons, which can decay through parity violating decay processes such as eta -> pi^0 pi^0, and global parity odd asymmetries for charged pions.	interpretation 0.68	0.19	0.19	hedged possibility 0.57
s4	Using a nonlinear sigma model, in QCD these metastable states only appear rather near the phase transition.	result 0.83	0.80	0.12	asserted 0.96

What kind of paper the classifier reports this is: theoretical result 0.84 · evidence from argument 0.86.

What was examined, and what was not

sources read

arXiv listing abstract v2

not examined

full text
figures and tables
references and citing sentences
relations to other papers

levels run

P abstract

not run

S sections
T body sentences
C citations
R cross-paper relations

Every quoted sentence on this record is the authors'. Every label is from Pith's closed vocabulary, with the probability shown beside it. Every number in the measurements table is the authors', checked by code. Record as JSON

References

Works cited (29)

[19]

S. Ohta and M. Wingate, work in progress

View on Pith
[1]

E. Laermann, Nucl. Phys. B (Proc. Suppl.) 63A-C, 114 (1998)

View on Pith 1998
[2]

R. D. Pisarski and F. Wilczek, Phys. Rev. D29 (1984) 338

View on Pith 1984
[3]

K. Rajagopal, in Quark-Gluon Plasma 2 , ed. R. Hwa (World Scientiﬁc, Singapore, 1995)

View on Pith 1995
[4]

G. ’t Hooft, Phys. Rept. 142, 357 (1986)

View on Pith 1986
[5]

I. Aﬄeck, Nucl. Phys. B162, 461 (1980); ibid., 171, 420 (1980)

View on Pith 1980
[6]

D. J. Gross, R. D. Pisarski, and L. G. Yaﬀe, Rev. Mod. Phys. 53 43 (1981)

View on Pith 1981
[7]

T. Schafer and E.V. Shuryak, hep-ph/9610451

View on Pith Pith review arXiv
[8]

A. V. Manohar, hep-ph/9802419; M. Teper, Phys. Lett. B397, 223 (1997); hep-lat/9804008

View on Pith Pith review arXiv 1997
[9]

E. Witten, Nucl. Phys. B156, 269 (1979)

View on Pith 1979
[10]

G. Veneziano, Nucl. Phys. B159, 213 (1980)

View on Pith 1980
[11]

P. Di Vecchia and G. Veneziano, Nucl.Phys. B171, 253 (1980)

View on Pith 1980
[12]

P. Di Vecchia, Phys. Lett. B85, 357 (1979); P. Di Vec- chia, F. Nicodemi, R. Pettorino, and G. Veneziano, Nucl. Phys. B181, 318 (1981)

View on Pith 1979
[13]

E. Witten, Annals Phys. 128, 363 (1980)

View on Pith 1980
[14]

argued that λY M (T ) vanishes when T > T d; our con- tribution is to estimate how it vanishes as T → T −d if the deconﬁning phase transition is of second order. If the de- conﬁning transition is of ﬁrst order, then as the hadronic phase is cold, presumably λY M (T ) = λY M (0) for T < T d, at which point it drops discontinuously to zero. (For an alternat...

View on Pith
[15]

A. C. Davis and A. M. Matheson, Phys. Lett. B179, 135 (1986); Nucl. Phys. B258, 373 (1985)

View on Pith 1986
[16]

E. Meggiolaro, Zeit. fur Phys. 62, 679, 669 (1994); ibid. 64, 323 (1994); hep-th/9802114

View on Pith Pith review arXiv 1994
[17]

C. B. Thorn, Phys. Lett. B99, 458 (1981)

View on Pith 1981
[18]

R. D. Pisarski, Phys. Rev. D29, 1222 (1984)

View on Pith 1984
[20]

R. D. Pisarski and M. H. G. Tytgat, hep-ph/9702340

View on Pith Pith review arXiv
[21]

R.D. Pisarski, Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 3084 (1996); R. Baier, M. Dirks, and O. Kober, Phys. Rev. D54, 2222 (1996); R. D. Pisarski, T. L. Trueman, and M. H. G. Tytgat, ibid., D56, 7077 (1997)

View on Pith 1996
[22]

C. Vafa and E. Witten, Phys. Rev. Lett. 53, 535 (1984)

View on Pith 1984
[23]

M. Shifman, Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 39, 1 (1997); esp. sec. 5.1; I. Halperin and A. Zhitnitsky; hep-ph/9707286; hep-ph/9803301

View on Pith Pith review arXiv 1997
[24]

S. Coleman, Phys. Rev. D15, 2929 (1977); A. D. Linde, Nucl. Phys. B216, 421 (1983)

View on Pith 1977
[25]

J. Kapusta, D. Kharzeev and L. McLerran, Phys. Rev. D53, 5028 (1996); Z. Huang and X.-N. Wang, Phys. Rev. D53, 5034 (1996)

View on Pith 1996
[26]

S.E.Vance, T.Cs¨ org˝ o and D.Kharzeev, nucl-th/9802074

View on Pith Pith review arXiv
[27]

Z. Huang, Phys. Rev. D49, 16 (1994)

View on Pith 1994
[28]

O. Nachtmann, Nucl. Phys. B127, 314 (1977); A. V. Efremov, Sov. J. Nucl. Phys. 28, 83 (1978); A. Efremov and D. Kharzeev, Phys. Lett. B366, 311 (1996)

View on Pith 1977
[29]

D. T. Son, hep-ph/9803412. 4

View on Pith Pith review arXiv

Forward citations

Cited by 24 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

Parity violation in hot QCD: why it can happen, and how to look for it
hep-ph 2004-06 conditional novelty 8.0 of 10

Metastable parity-odd domains in hot QCD would produce a charge-dependent asymmetry of pions with respect to the reaction plane, estimated at the percent level for RHIC collisions.
On the $\theta$-angle physics of QCD under pressure: The strange and isospin phase diagram
hep-ph 2025-01 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

The three-flavor QCD phase diagram at finite isospin and strangeness chemical potentials acquires a theta-dependence with a novel parity-preserving superfluid phase at theta = pi and no Dashen transition inside the su...
Polarization as a signature of local parity violation in hot QCD matter
hep-ph 2020-09 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

An axial chemical potential, if present at hadronization, induces a helicity contribution to spin-1/2 baryons, detectable via a helicity-helicity azimuthal correlation that survives event averaging.
Probing the Spatial Coherence of Chiral-Imbalance Fluctuations with Hyperon Spin Correlations
hep-ph 2026-11 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

Hyperon-pair spin correlations in AMPT simulations separate the amplitude from the spatial coherence of chiral-imbalance fluctuations via the short-to-long-range correlation ratio RSL.
A Quantal Theory of Restoration of Strong CP Symmetry
hep-ph 2025-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

A mechanism is proposed where the CP violating phase relaxes in discrete steps via nucleation of membranes that discharge the magnetic dual of a 4-form flux, with bubbles colliding and percolating near the chiral symm...

Show 19 more citing papers

Constraints on the chiral magnetic effect using charge-dependent azimuthal correlations in pPb and PbPb collisions at the LHC
nucl-ex 2017-08 accept novelty 6.0 of 10

Charge-dependent three-particle azimuthal correlations in pPb and PbPb collisions are dominated by charge-conservation background coupled to anisotropic flow, leaving at most 7-13% room for a chiral magnetic effect si...
Observation of charge-dependent azimuthal correlations in pPb collisions and its implication for the search for the chiral magnetic effect
nucl-ex 2016-10 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

The charge-dependent three-particle correlator has the same magnitude and multiplicity dependence in pPb and PbPb collisions at 5.02 TeV, which challenges reading it as a chiral magnetic effect signal.
Change of theta dependence in 4D SU(N) gauge theories across the deconfinement transition
hep-lat 2013-01 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

The theta dependence of 4D SU(N) gauge theory switches from a theta/N large-N scaling below the deconfinement transition to a theta-only instanton-gas form above it.
Thermodynamics and Instabilities of a Strongly Coupled Anisotropic Plasma
hep-th 2011-06 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

A regular finite-temperature supergravity solution dual to an anisotropic N=4 plasma yields a conserved stress tensor with a conformal anomaly and a phase diagram in which the homogeneous anisotropic phase can be unst...
Phase diagram of hot QCD in an external magnetic field: possible splitting of deconfinement and chiral transitions
hep-ph 2010-04 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

In a Polyakov-loop linear sigma model, a strong magnetic field can split the deconfinement and chiral transitions, producing a deconfined phase with broken chiral symmetry, but only if quark vacuum corrections are retained.
Numerical evidence of chiral magnetic effect in lattice gauge theory
hep-lat 2009-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

Quenched SU(2) lattice simulations show the quark electric current growing preferentially along an applied magnetic field, consistent with the chiral magnetic effect, and a fitted fireball model reproduces the shape o...
Charge separation induced by P-odd bubbles in QCD matter
hep-ph 2007-06 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

Angular momentum in QCD matter with nonzero theta induces an electric field along the rotation axis, producing a few-percent charge separation across the reaction plane in heavy ion collisions.
Nuclear Physics Confronts Relativistic Collisions Of Isobars
nucl-ex 2025-07 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

RHIC isobar data are explained by different shapes of 96Ru and 96Zr, with 96Zr showing a large octupole deformation, so nuclear structure uncertainty, not the magnetic field, dominates the observed ratios.
Chiral Anomaly, Schwinger Effect, Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian, and application to axion inflation
hep-ph 2019-10 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

Fermion backreaction in helical gauge fields during axion inflation suppresses gauge field production, and the size of that suppression, hence the scalar and tensor spectra, depends strongly on the fermion mass.
Back-to-back relative-excess observable in search for the chiral magnetic effect
nucl-th 2019-08 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

The back-to-back relative OS/SS pair excess r_BB(ϕ_BB) is sensitive to the chiral magnetic effect and far less affected by resonance-decay backgrounds than the standard Δγ observable.
Constraining the magnitude of the Chiral Magnetic Effect with Event Shape Engineering in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}$ = 2.76$ TeV
nucl-ex 2017-09 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

Event-shape-selected Pb-Pb data show the charge-dependent three-particle correlator scales with elliptic flow, capping the Chiral Magnetic Effect contribution at 26-33% (95% CL) in 10-50% centrality.
Phase diagram of Yang-Mills theories in the presence of a theta term
hep-lat 2013-06 accept novelty 5.0 of 10

The deconfinement temperature of SU(3) Yang-Mills falls quadratically with the topological theta angle, with continuum curvature R_theta = 0.0178(5), confirmed by two independent lattice methods.
Running the gamut of high energy nuclear collisions
nucl-th 2020-05 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

A single parameter set fixed in 200 GeV Au+Au collisions describes bulk observables and flow across Pb+Pb, Xe+Xe, U+U, Ru+Ru, Zr+Zr, O+O, and asymmetric small systems, with predictions for unmeasured systems.
Future physics opportunities for high-density QCD at the LHC with heavy-ion and proton beams
hep-ph 2018-12 accept novelty 4.0 of 10

A community planning report that sets the heavy-ion physics priorities for LHC Runs 3 and 4 and estimates the luminosity and detector performance needed to reach them.
An Experimental Exploration of the QCD Phase Diagram: The Search for the Critical Point and the Onset of De-confinement
nucl-ex 2010-07 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

STAR proposes a RHIC beam energy scan from 5 to 39 GeV, with event-count targets for critical-point and deconfinement measurements and test-run evidence that the detector performs at those energies.
Topologically induced local P and CP violation in QCD x QED
hep-ph 2009-11 conditional novelty 3.0 of 10

Topological charge fluctuations in QCD, coupled to intense electromagnetic fields through the axial anomaly, produce a parity-odd electric current along the magnetic field, and the STAR charge-asymmetry data are prese...
Properties of the QCD Matter -- An Experimental Review of Selected Results from RHIC BES Program
nucl-ex 2024-07 conditional novelty 2.0 of 10

A review compiling STAR beam-energy-scan results on collectivity, chirality, criticality, global polarization, strangeness, heavy flavor, dileptons and light nuclei, prefaced by the history of the Chinese-built STAR M...
Topology, magnetic field, and strongly interacting matter
hep-ph 2015-01 accept novelty 2.0 of 10

Topological gluon configurations combined with a background magnetic field produce the chiral magnetic effect, which this review traces from quark-gluon plasma through Dirac semimetals to neutron stars and the early Universe.
The Chiral Magnetic Effect and Anomaly-Induced Transport
hep-ph 2013-12 accept novelty 2.0 of 10

The review argues that the chiral magnetic effect is a topologically protected, non-dissipative transport phenomenon of chiral fermions, linking the quark-gluon plasma, the early universe, and Weyl semimetals.

How the literature uses it

91 arXiv papers cite this in 126 sentences

Each citing sentence is taken from the citing paper's LaTeX source and typed by Pith's classifier. A label appears at probability 0.8 or more (0.95 for support), a contest at 0.7 or more; the quoted words are the citing authors'. How each label was checked · JSON

Papers whose main result relates to this one's

Found among the papers closest to this one by title and main claim. Pith's classifier compared each pair's main results and a second model family confirmed the relation; checked against two further families, shown conflicts agreed 118 times in 120 and shown same results 218 times in 239. The quoted sentence is the other paper's main claim.

States the same result 1 paper

As noted by Witten, this implies that for sufficiently light quark masses, metastable states which act like regions of nonzero $\theta$ --- parity odd bubbles --- can arise at temperatures just below $T_d$.

Parity odd bubbles in hot QCD · 0.91

Papers citing it · 74 sentences without a confident label

Cites it as background 45 papers

The physics behind it can be explained in several different but complementary ways [ref] - [ref] .

Towards a quantum theory of chiral magnetic effect · Introduction · 0.97
It was suggested in [ref] that metastable $P$ and $CP$ odd domains, characterized by non-zero topological charge, might be created in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions.

Experimental study of local strong parity violation in relativistic nuclear collisions · Introduction · 0.96
The most interesting effect discussed in this context in the so called Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME) [ref] - [ref] .

Non-Stationary Measurements of Chiral Magnetic Effect · Introduction · 0.99

Discussion

Disagree with the review, or know something it missed? Leave a comment, highlight any passage above to comment on it, or challenge this review formally.

[1] [19]

S. Ohta and M. Wingate, work in progress

View on Pith

[2] [1]

E. Laermann, Nucl. Phys. B (Proc. Suppl.) 63A-C, 114 (1998)

View on Pith 1998

[3] [2]

R. D. Pisarski and F. Wilczek, Phys. Rev. D29 (1984) 338

View on Pith 1984

[4] [3]

K. Rajagopal, in Quark-Gluon Plasma 2 , ed. R. Hwa (World Scientiﬁc, Singapore, 1995)

View on Pith 1995

[5] [4]

G. ’t Hooft, Phys. Rept. 142, 357 (1986)

View on Pith 1986

[6] [5]

I. Aﬄeck, Nucl. Phys. B162, 461 (1980); ibid., 171, 420 (1980)

View on Pith 1980

[7] [6]

D. J. Gross, R. D. Pisarski, and L. G. Yaﬀe, Rev. Mod. Phys. 53 43 (1981)

View on Pith 1981

[8] [7]

T. Schafer and E.V. Shuryak, hep-ph/9610451

View on Pith Pith review arXiv

[9] [8]

A. V. Manohar, hep-ph/9802419; M. Teper, Phys. Lett. B397, 223 (1997); hep-lat/9804008

View on Pith Pith review arXiv 1997

[10] [9]

E. Witten, Nucl. Phys. B156, 269 (1979)

View on Pith 1979

[11] [10]

G. Veneziano, Nucl. Phys. B159, 213 (1980)

View on Pith 1980

[12] [11]

P. Di Vecchia and G. Veneziano, Nucl.Phys. B171, 253 (1980)

View on Pith 1980

[13] [12]

P. Di Vecchia, Phys. Lett. B85, 357 (1979); P. Di Vec- chia, F. Nicodemi, R. Pettorino, and G. Veneziano, Nucl. Phys. B181, 318 (1981)

View on Pith 1979

[14] [13]

E. Witten, Annals Phys. 128, 363 (1980)

View on Pith 1980

[15] [14]

argued that λY M (T ) vanishes when T > T d; our con- tribution is to estimate how it vanishes as T → T −d if the deconﬁning phase transition is of second order. If the de- conﬁning transition is of ﬁrst order, then as the hadronic phase is cold, presumably λY M (T ) = λY M (0) for T < T d, at which point it drops discontinuously to zero. (For an alternat...

View on Pith

[16] [15]

A. C. Davis and A. M. Matheson, Phys. Lett. B179, 135 (1986); Nucl. Phys. B258, 373 (1985)

View on Pith 1986

[17] [16]

E. Meggiolaro, Zeit. fur Phys. 62, 679, 669 (1994); ibid. 64, 323 (1994); hep-th/9802114

View on Pith Pith review arXiv 1994

[18] [17]

C. B. Thorn, Phys. Lett. B99, 458 (1981)

View on Pith 1981

[19] [18]

R. D. Pisarski, Phys. Rev. D29, 1222 (1984)

View on Pith 1984

[20] [20]

R. D. Pisarski and M. H. G. Tytgat, hep-ph/9702340

View on Pith Pith review arXiv

[21] [21]

R.D. Pisarski, Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 3084 (1996); R. Baier, M. Dirks, and O. Kober, Phys. Rev. D54, 2222 (1996); R. D. Pisarski, T. L. Trueman, and M. H. G. Tytgat, ibid., D56, 7077 (1997)

View on Pith 1996

[22] [22]

C. Vafa and E. Witten, Phys. Rev. Lett. 53, 535 (1984)

View on Pith 1984

[23] [23]

M. Shifman, Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 39, 1 (1997); esp. sec. 5.1; I. Halperin and A. Zhitnitsky; hep-ph/9707286; hep-ph/9803301

View on Pith Pith review arXiv 1997

[24] [24]

S. Coleman, Phys. Rev. D15, 2929 (1977); A. D. Linde, Nucl. Phys. B216, 421 (1983)

View on Pith 1977

[25] [25]

J. Kapusta, D. Kharzeev and L. McLerran, Phys. Rev. D53, 5028 (1996); Z. Huang and X.-N. Wang, Phys. Rev. D53, 5034 (1996)

View on Pith 1996

[26] [26]

S.E.Vance, T.Cs¨ org˝ o and D.Kharzeev, nucl-th/9802074

View on Pith Pith review arXiv

[27] [27]

Z. Huang, Phys. Rev. D49, 16 (1994)

View on Pith 1994

[28] [28]

O. Nachtmann, Nucl. Phys. B127, 314 (1977); A. V. Efremov, Sov. J. Nucl. Phys. 28, 83 (1978); A. Efremov and D. Kharzeev, Phys. Lett. B366, 311 (1996)

View on Pith 1977

[29] [29]

D. T. Son, hep-ph/9803412. 4

View on Pith Pith review arXiv